


the exuberance of youth: film en douze tableaux

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Cuddling & Snuggling, Developing Relationship, Don't Touch Lola, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Introspection, Mortality, Nouvelle Vague mashup, POV Phil Coulson, Pretentious, Secret Relationship, Skye and Coulson trying to be French, Skye teaches Coulson how to live, Unresolved Romantic Tension, no seriously i need to use that tag, not Grant Ward friendly, what is this even
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:29:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489420
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faced with his own mortality Coulson finds himself trying to recover his lost youth. Skye goes along with the plan. </p><p>(The Skoulson/Nouvelle Vague mash-up you never knew you wanted)</p><p>Edit: Written before 2x05 aired so kind of AU-ish by now, but not too much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. le feu follet

He hasn't read the books. Barely seen the movies. Everything too intellectual for his taste. He appreciates the glimpses of elegance. Elegance is important when you grew up without it. He's seen the posters, _affiches_ , the odd scene here and there. He doesn't know the music. He has no knowledge of being that particular archetype – Americanized, of course, but that doesn't work, that's not the archetype, it doesn't sound the same in English. Doesn't have the same pathos. There was one movie of those that he liked, though: the one about the man who had had many lovers and they all loved him so much that when he dies his funeral is filled with women.

He wonders how many people will come to his funeral.

 

 

He starts counting last times.

Or maybe-last-times.

He starts thinking to himself, This is my last mission, maybe.

This is my last time on the field, maybe.

When he was undercover with May he was thinking, This is the last time I ever dance with someone, maybe.

He entertains himself making these lists.

It approaches, the moment when he can say: this is the last order I give.

It strange to think in those terms, that you can know these things, that you can have that sort of certainty. Your last conversation, your last cup of coffee, your last day, your last breath. They are coming. It's almost a gift, all this _knowing_. An overwhelming amount of knowing.

It gives him a certain zen-like calm, having made plans for his eventual and possibly very near demise. Now he knows where he stands. He's going to die and he has accepted this. This acceptance opens many possibilities for him.

 

 

He's with Hunter, thinking, This is my last beer, maybe. 

Knowing that, for tonight at least, it won't be the last one.

Perhaps a penchant melodramatism is one of the unexpected pleasures of dying.

Third time he does this with Hunter. Third time around might be a tradition, or approaching one. They're in his office. It is hard and easy to look at Hunter right now, bask in the hate of his thoughtless beauty, his health. His simpleness, in a way. This guy is not very deep and that's something to be envied right now. His solidity. Coulson doesn't feel solid anymore. He doesn't touch people anymore. He never touched people much, anyway, did he. He might have already become a ghost, he doesn't know. Is this really his third beer? He feels drunker than that. But not as drunk as he'd.

Hunter is shallow enough that he doesn't question why the Director of SHIELD spends his time drinking with a mercenary. Ex-mercenary or in the process to become an ex-mercenary. He talks a lot, which suits Coulson fine because that way he doesn't have to talk at all.

He talks a lot.

"Has Skye done something very ludicrous to you, sir?" Hunter asks at some point. "Why are you so pissed off at her?"

The phrasing surprises Coulson, and the mere idea.

"Pissed off?"

"The way you talk to her," Hunter explains casually, like this is some small matters and also everybody's knowledge. "Like you can't stand her. I thought you liked her. She must have done something to deserve it. You're not a tyrant. Or are you?"

Hunter has a big mouth and maybe this is not a bad thing. One last confession, that could be on his list. Though it's not Hunter whom he should be confessing to.

Looking back it's this conversation which set everything in motion; Hunter's easy handsomeness, his careless vitality. Jealousy, yes. But more complicated than that. He doesn't want to be Hunter. He wants to be himself. If there is even such a thing as Phil Coulson. Maybe there was, once, he can't remember. Maybe there wasn't.

Coulson hates Hunter for the same reasons he wants to keep him close and is revolted by that streak of petiness in himself. He doesn't want to become the worst version of himself right before he dies. He wants to become – he wants to become something, and something different.

 _Like you can't stand her_. Hunter definitely talks too much.

But there's also his seemingly endless supply of beer.

 

 

"You look like crap," Skye points out when he slithers towards the fridge at seven in the morning the next day.

"Hangover," he explains.

Skye is amused, of course. Not alarmed or disgusted.

She raises her eyebrow: " _Hunter_."

"He's a public menace," Coulson says, leaning against the counter because walking is a Herculean task at this point. "I'm taking away his lanyard."

"There's tomato juice in the fridge. It helps." He gives her a look. "Don't ask."

She takes pity and pours him a glass without having to be asked, so that he doesn't have to move more than necessary. She even puts lime in it. She looks too awake for seven in the morning. Then, Coulson realizes, her workout clothes. She trains early. And she trains hard (sweat, her neck, and the darker damp hair falling over her nape). Her days are long and lonely.

He drinks a long sip of the juice. He's showered and shaven and he put on a clean suit but he can't seem to shake off the drunken daze of last night. He doesn't feel that bad, but it's a bit annoying. He runs his hand over his hair.

"I guess I should act my age," he says.

He's not sure if he's looking for pity. He doesn't dare hope for a rebuttal.

Skye drops casually on one of the chairs, legs crossed, and Coulson can't stop thinking about what Hunter said, about how obvious it all is, how hopeless.

"What the hell does that mean?" she says, still amused. Perhaps impressed. "Your age? I think it's great you had fun."

"You do?"

"Well, for one you are talking to me," she tells him and she makes it sound light enough that it doesn't completely break Coulson's heart. _Like you can't stand her_. "I don't want to jinx it but you must have said like almost twenty words to me already. That's this year's record. Personally, I think you should get drunk more often."

She smiles at him like that and is this the last time Skye ever smiles at him like that? Or the last time anyone does?

 

 

Part of him says _Fuck it_. Fuck everything, really. His past. All the expectations. The need to be proper and professional and keep himself in check all the time. He never really lived a proper life, he realizes. For all his five star hotels, for all the years learning when to drink red and when to drink wine, which cuttlery, which tailors, which brand of watches, which aftershave, which accent, these things are not his and they are definitely not _him_ and at the end of it all they leave him empty because there is a kind of element of show to them, what is Phil Coulson to others. What is he to himself? That's not a life, it does have the coherency of a real life. They are just things he has collected, habits, beliefs, voices. Every taste is an acquired taste. What about his tastes? What does he really like? What does he _love_?

 

 

This is the last time he decides to woo a woman, maybe.

 

 

She's kept the ridiculous scooter. Technically it's SHIELD's property now but technically he guesses it's the biggest possession Skye has had since her van. He doesn't question it. It's something that's happened.

"Taking off?" he asks her as she sees her heading out. They are trapped, marooned somewhere on the South American coast due to technical difficulties and the fact that someone tried to blow up the Bus again. 

"It'll be hours before Mack finishes here," she replies, still a bit confused that Coulson is talking to her, seeking her out, being friendly. Which is what he has been doing the last few days since his conversation with Hunter. Confused and delighted. Coulson knows what a dangerous combination that is and he can't say that wasn't what he was aiming for. "And you're supposed to see this city on one of these. I've read it somewhere."

He looks at her. She's wearing one of those loose shirts he doesn't see her in anymore.

Coulson touches the front of the scooter. They got it for a mission but obviously Skye sees a value beyond that. It's not just a tool. "You like this thing. Don't you?"

Her face light up. "Are you kidding me? It's great. Plus you have your Lola and I have my... _thing_."

She drops her gaze, a little embarrassed. Coulson feels awkward too, standing here in the cargo hold and he should really let her go and have her break and have her rest, but he doesn't want to, just yet.

"Well, it looks like you have fun on it," he says, woodenly. "I'm glad."

"Do you want a ride?" Skye asks.

"Yes, of course."

She does a double-take. Alarmed or impressed or both.

"Wow. I was not counting on you saying _yes_ ," she says. There's that smile again. No, the other morning wasn't the last time. Something inside Coulson ignites at the thought, that he could be wrong about last times. "Come on, hop on."

Skye was right. It's a beautiful city by scooter. He wonders if he could say it, Last time a girl gives me a ride in her motorbike, maybe, because the truth is this has never happened before. Her hair gets in his eyes and his hands hold on tightly, arms wrapped around her waist, open-palmed over her stomach, chest against the curve of Skye's back. As it should be. Very cliched, very... European. French even. He is not trying to be French. He just thought that this is something he'd like to try before he goes. Not just the bike ride, you see. Holding Skye like this. Letting Skye take him where she wants.

And where she wants to take him is a beautiful spot at the edge of the beach, where there are fewer tourists.

The colors of the afternoon are, of course, quite different because he's dying. Is there such a thing as warm blue, warm gray? The orange of the sky would suffice. There are a thousand elegiac novels written about this sort of thing – Coulson never read them. They seat on the sea wall as the sun sets. There's quite a breeze between them and Skye still regards the afternoon with suspicion, like she can't quite believe it's for real.

"Your hair looks funny," she says, reaching out her hand like she wants to touch it, then thinking better and lying back on her palms and flexing her legs, letting the wind on her face.

"Thanks," he says, honestly. "That was fun."

"You're welcome."

She looks happy. Maybe she's just relieved he is talking to her again. He knows he's been a dick.

The city lights come alive just as they are returning to the airbase. He must look like something – with his expensive suit and on a scooter, behind the girl. At least he must look like _something_ , even something ridiculous. He would settle for ridiculous over nothing any day. Over a lifetime of nothing. Coulson has the feeling Skye is riding a bit slower now, making it last. He doesn't mind. He is holding on to her hips a bit tighter now, making it count.

When they arrive there's a certain activity around the plane.

"Looks like Mack has the Bus back in form," Skye comments. "Pity, we could have gone riding again tomorrow."

"Some other time," he says. Knowing there won't be another time, probably. His lists are divided between _maybe_ and _probably_ , like the difference matters.

She smiles at his lie.

Another Last time I make Skye smile, maybe.

There's a kind of freedom to knowing he's going to die he hadn't anticipated. It's not the not having anything to lose. All his life that has been true; he never had anything to lose, and still he held back. No, it's the selfishness of knowing the consequences won't touch him. That makes him a horrible person, in all probability.

But. That doesn't change the fact that he is finding really hard to keep a filter between what he wants and what he does right now. That doesn't change the fact that he finds it very difficult to not what what he wants.

He kisses Skye.

It's light and almost chaste. Good-humored, sweet, close-mouthed on the corner of her mouth. It has all the sunshine they've collected in their ride. The wind too. It's good. It's a nice kiss.

"What was that?" Skye asks, eyes very wide.

Semi-public. Impulsive. No wonder she doesn't understand.

Of course he'd always liked Skye – yes, _like that_. It was hard not to. But he didn't want to be that cliche. 

He could use some cliches right now.

He shoves his hands in his pockets. There's something too calculated about what he is doing but it's a process. If Skye lets him go on Coulson thinks he could do this more organically, he could learn to let go. He tells her "I don't know."

"That's a pretty big thing for you not to know," she points out. "What am I supposed to do with it?"

"What do you want to do, Skye?"

She cocks her head to one side.

"Maybe... think about it for a bit?"

 

 

Three days later they are in his room, and he is pulling Skye's t-shirt over her head. He dips his head to give the curve of her ribcage a teasing kiss.

"You're being super weird," Skye says, mouth wide with some sort of joy. "First you barely speak to me. Now you – you _seduce_ me."

She didn't object to being seduced. But he is glad she knew what he was doing all along. It makes things seem less... reproachable. He didn't fool her for one minute.

"Skye," he calls, brushing his thumb across her hipbone as she undresses. "Would you be okay if I used you to recover some sort of lost youth for a while?"

She nods, looking excited.

"No, I'm totally fine with that. Now lose your pants."

That makes him laugh – is this the last time he laughs, maybe; the last time a beautiful woman makes him laugh, maybe.

"You don't worry about being the vessel for my midlife crisis?" Coulson asks, a bit self-deprecating but also because he doesn't want Skye to get the wrong idea.

She sits on the bed, still half-dressed. She regards him with more seriousness now, but the playfulness is not totally gone, thank God. Coulson was enjoying her energy.

"Not at all," she assures him, taking his hand in hers, a surprisingly girlish gesture for Skye. "Look, Coulson, I know there's something wrong with you. But I trust that you'll tell me, on your own, without me having to snoop around. And all this crap you're saying about lost youth and midlife crisis... That's okay if you want to tell yourself that's what's going on. And now stop talking."

He stops talking. 

In part because it's hard to talk when Skye is kissing him like this. This is what he was hoping for.

 

 

Last time he has sex with somebody, maybe, he thinks, afterwards.

And if that is true, he has no complains. It wasn't perfect, not by his standards, and the emotions Skye rose in him got in the way of complete satisfaction. He had been a bit too eager in a way. But Skye seemed to appreciate the enthusiam over his somehow-rusty skills. She told him it had been a long time for her. He didn't tell her he hadn't been with anyone else since before his death. He doesn't tell her he probably won't be with anyone else before his death. And there was the fear of his condition, how he feels dishonest for not telling her, and that got in the way a bit. But he wouldn't trade this flawed encounter with Skye for many of his more perfect previous memories of the act. The second time was better, once they both relaxed, and the mere fact that there was a second time is remarkable in itself.

And against his expectations he didn't feel too old against Skye's twenty-something skin. And Skye didn't seem to think about it at all.

Now Skye's wearing his shirt – last time that happens to him, probably, the simple allure of that image catches him by surprise – and she has her legs, her beautiful dark bare legs, resting over Coulson's lap. He is drawing lazy circles on her ankle. He loves this bit, quiet and quietly erotic, Skye naked across his nakedness, both perfectly at ease with each other.

It's a cliche, but he wants to say it, if even once: "Can I see you again?"

Skye chuckles at the question.

"I didn't assume this was a one time thing."

"Don't assume I can give you much more than that," he says and okay, he sounds self-pitying, but Skye is a kind soul, she won't hold it against him.

"That's just fine by me," she says, shrugging. Her shoulders, he loves her bare shoulders. "The last guy I dated sold his soul for a million dollars. And the last guy I liked... well, I don't have to _tell you_ , you keep him the basement. My point is, I'm totally okay if you want this to be casual. I could use some fun."

Yes, he wants to have fun. He wants to have fun _with her_. His hand slides from her ankle to her knee, thumbing an old childhood scar, a little pink crack on her skin.

She lets him touch her like this for a while longer, a thoughtful look on her brow.

"Let's go raid a HYDRA headquarters," she says, without warning.

"What?"

"Come on. I've seen your contigency plans," she tells him, sitting up and standing up, in the grip of some great and sudden enthusiasm. "All the research. What are we waiting for? We could be raiding HYDRA buildings all day long. The one in Oakland, for example. I know you've been planning that assault for ages, ordering surveillance on the place. It's a safehouse with only two guards. You and I could take it, no problem."

"What are you talking about?" he asks. 

"You want to do something, right? Feel something. Your mission about the painting, you wanted to see action, that much was obvious. Come on, sir, let's do our jobs and punch some Nazis in the face."

What does this has to do with anything, he wonders. Does sex always invokes anti-Fascist rightfulness in Skye? That's what he wants to know. He still loves her energy, naked in the middle of his room and talking about taking down the bad guy. He can't help but love the entirety of the image. But he feels that he can't justify going along with her plan.

"I'm not about to put my team in danger to assert my manhood," he tells her.

Skye makes a face, sceptic. "Your manhood has been asserted twice in the last hour, this is about feeling useful. I know you want that. God knows I want that."

He stops looking at Skye for a moment – which is hard, she's naked in the middle of his room, will this ever happen again, he should hold on to the picture and not let it go – and drops his gaze, considering her words.

"It would feel good to deliver a couple of HYDRA agents to the Army, if only to see Talbot's face when I do," he admits.

Skye raises a pleased eyebrow at him. Skye has a variety of raised eyebrows. Coulson wishes he could catalogue them, record them for posterity or private consumption. He wonders if there are raised eyebrows he still doesn't know in her, a collecting impulse more than an affinity for mystery-solving, he wants to knows every gesture and commit it to heart and go to his grave with that precious knowledge inside his head.

"See? It's a great idea," she says.

"Are you always this belligerent after sex?"

"Sometimes even during."

"I _noticed_ ," Coulson points out.

"Come on, you loved that part."

"I did, but I already told you, I'm not that flexible."

"Don't change the subject. What about that raid?"

"May would kill me," he says, smirking at Skye, because he has already decided to do it. "I don't think we can."

"I thought you were the Director of SHIELD, not the Director of Sitting on You Ass. I'll talk to May."

"Skye..."

"Though it's a really nice ass. In fact, turn around, I want to see it again."

It makes him laugh and he is not used to that. He decides, impulsively (not used to that either, but kind of the point of this), to give Skye what she wants so he turns over, naked on the bed, and comes to rest on his stomach. He watches Skye closely from over his shoulder. She seems to be in deep thought for a moment and then she climbs on the bed again, crawling over to his side. She runs her nails across his lower back and his cheeks appreciatively. He's not sure anyone has quite exactly done that to him before. He feels very full of himself.

"So?" she asks again. "HYDRA? Oakland? Usefulness?"

He moans against the pillow. "I guess it would be technically just us doing our job."

"Great," she says, raising from the bed. "Can we bring Hunter along? To troll him? We can put him on coms and ask him to do computer stuff he has no idea how to do."

Coulson laughs against the pillow.

 

 

When they come back May does not kill him and she seems to accept his explanation about his anxiety to do good and something vague about legacy – these are not lies and that's why Coulson can tell them without guilt, but thinking about Skye's naked body over him and his own blissful inability to say "no" to her.

He feels better afterwards. Violence has normally the opposite effect; violence leaves him tired and sticky like he's walked through mud. But putting two HYDRA agents behind bars, even if they are really low in the ladder, even if the bars are the Army's, has a strange soothing effect on him. It's a little victory but against the enormity of his defeat little victories are all he can count on.

Coulson wonders how long until he can ask Skye to be with him again. He was patient after kissing her that first time, letting her come to his. He's not sure he can keep his nerve now. Seeing Skye in action didn't help. He's always had a thing for competent women, has always been naturally drawn to those who held some sort of power over him. And Skye is gorgeous to see on the field. Vibrant, and now Coulson knows she's like that in everything she does. The fear that she might get hurt on a mission never really disminishes the joy of seeing her in action and Coulson knows all those received truths about non-fraternization rules are utter bullshit. But knowing her only makes him want her more – he feels an itch under his skin, different to the one he gets when the time approaches to write the symbols. A kind of mundane, joyful noise in his veins. He can think of little else when they get back to the base, Hunter complaining of their treatment of him, Skye, hard-working, staying behind in the Bus to pack up the equipment. He can think of little else than the afternoon they've just spent together, and the possibility of more. _More_ , of anything, is not something he should be wanting at this point. He can't help it and he doesn't care.

As it turns out he doesn't need to keep his nerve.

He is walking to his office when Skye grabs his arm and pulls him into the deserted meeting room. The glass walls are not much for privacy so she leads them behind a column, hides them, twists her hand into the fabric of his tie, and presses her mouth, hungry but kind of hesitating, against Coulson's.

"Can I see you again?" she asks.


	2. baisers volés

"It's time," he tells Mack.

"Sir?"

He likes watching him work. He likes watching people work with their hands. It brings back memories of uncomplicated summers when he was a teenager. It's been too long since he's worked with his hands. The muscles have lost their memory – replaced by pulling a trigger, curling his fingers into a first. He can't build things anymore.

"What do you need?" he asks. "To fix Lola?"

Mack's face lights up; it is safe to say it becomes three times bigger when it does. His delight fills the whole room.

"Well, I'm gonna need some money, to start with," he replies.

Coulson smiles. "I was afraid you were gonna say that."

He doesn't have much to spare but he feels this is important (he has the girl, now he needs the car, if he is going to build this fantasy piece by piece he is going to do it properly and maybe, in the meantime, he can think of a perfect ending). What is he saving his money for, anyway?

 

 

 

To say that he is going through a sexual awakening of some sort would be an understatement. Not that he hadn't enjoyed sex before. He loves sex. He's good at it. He enjoys pleasuring his partners and knowing that he can. But part of that enjoyment was that he didn't have to give himself too much if he didn't want to. He was always good at control. No one gets to see more than he allows them. It wasn't like that in the beginning. This detachment which came over him at the moment when he should be closer to another human being. When he was young he pursued that connection with his lovers, but he had no idea of what he was doing. And some poins his skills and his feelings took forking paths away from each other. And now he knows he has been wasting his time, and everybody else's too. Now that control eludes him in a painful manner he finally recovers that original joy. Perhaps because he doesn't have much to hide anymore or because pride is quickly seeping off of him with the days, or it's just Skye managing a trick without meaning to. But now he is giving himself, giving himself up. And it's fun. It's not scary, or not scary in a bad way.

He wants her all the time.

As soon as he is finished with her, he desires her again. A sort of singlemindness he has never known before. Is it the circumstances? Is it the girl? He always wanted her - even when he thought the idea was shaming - but not like this. It increases with every encounter. Each time, he lingers a bit longer in her room, she stays a bit longer in his room. Casual, but all-encompassing. Each time he makes it last a little bit longer, prolonguing their pleasure so he can stay with her. Would she stay if he asked her? She seems happy while it's happening. She seems happy when he is stroking her back afterwards, tender as a confession, carving tiny moments of wholeness out of the enourmous emptiness. He can't win against it, but he can kiss Skye one more time. Every time one more kiss than their previous meeting.

They search for each other all over the base, exploring the corners and crooks of the building, hiding from other human voices. One or two times they almost get caught – in the common rooms, their hands sliding towards each other with adolescent mischeviousnes, over every available surface, fingers over couches, fingers over desks and under tables, a couple of ill-timed kisses, Coulson's hand on Skye's hips just around the corner from a conversation, okay, it's more than two times, Skye's face catching a surprising flush, Skye strangely bothered by the idea of disobedience, Skye excited by Coulson's hand on her neck in the deserted shooting range, Skye on her knees across his office floor.

The wrinkles of his suit spell out her name.

It's almost as if they meet by chance sometimes. They don't plan things. Part of his plan is not planning. He's not a spontaneous person. It's too late for him.

 

 

He fears being discovered by May the most. He fears being judged by someone who knew him when he was young, who could guess what he's playing at. The ways in which he is taking advantage of Skye. The ways in which the fact that Skye is willing to be taken advantage of doesn't really matter.

 

 

"An old man," he says, counting her vertrebae with blind hands, like he's quoting from a book. "Trying to feel relevant by sleeping with a young girl. How sad is that?"

Skye sits on the bed, alarmed. "Oh my god. You never told me you were _old_. How old are you?"

He rolls his eyes at her.

She collapses, laughing, on top of him, her thighs the brackets of his sentences, golden under his hands. At three in the morning he hides inside her room. He hides, he hides, he dies. At three in the morning he never wants to go to sleep.

"Indulge me," he says.

At three in the morning she is wearing his t-shirt and the whole world is asleep. He likes it inside her room – it's bare, which surprises him, and he guesses that says more about the mood in which Skye has been the past few months than any real inclination, and that saddens him, because he provoked this.

"I'll indulge you. In everything else," she replies, pinning his hands to the headboard, squeezing him with her legs.

His body is pure decay and yet it reacts. It's too late for him. Why risk himself? Why risk her like this? He's afraid of her. Of his illness manifesting themselves when he's with her. There's a las bit of himself he can't give up just yet. Not until he tells her the truth. He's thinking about telling her the truth. Skye pins him against the headboard, wraps her hand around his cock, round, wet kisses against his throat to capture every moan, collect every whimper with her lips and her tongue. His body is a vibration pressed to Skye's skin. It's dangerous. He doesn't listen. Freedom. Pleasure. What was the question?

 

 

 

It becomes increasingly difficult to hide things from her.

He goes away for a couple of days after the latest spell. Skye accepts they don't always have to be together. She's very accommodating, you can say that about the girl.

Sometimes her face looks like she's missing him already. Sometimes Coulson imagines he's already dead. He imagines her reaction – alternatively enjoying the idea that she might hurt for him and hating the idea that she might be sad for him.

Unable to resist even the silliest, most sentimental of impulses these days – is this the last chance to give in? The last sentimental impulse? The last impulse he can actually do something about? – he slips inside Skey's bedroom at six in the morning before leaving. Pretending to be asleep she lets him trace the line of her eyebrows.

"Saying goodbye?" she asks in a sleepy voice, thick and low, and pleased. "Let me brush my teeth."

He loves these moments when she leaves him alone in her room, hides into the bathroom for a moment while Coulson sits on her bed. His real fantasies are way too domestic, he realizes. He doesn't have time for them. He only really has time for the sex, but the gentleness, the sweetness Skye brings to it... He wonders why he came here, so early, just because he wasn't going to see her in a couple of days, because he didn't spend last night with her, because there's a new coat of paint on the wall of his office.

She wraps her arms around his neck, casually, when she comes back into the room.

"Are you my girlfriend?" he asks. There are movies where people are continually asking each other _do you love me?_ Coulson always found such characters quite ridiculous.

"Do you want me to be?" she asks. She's so accommodating.

He wraps his hand around the back of her neck. He's tired, the writing of the symbols last night has left him exhausted, drained, raw.

"Casual girlfriend?" he pleads with her – please, Skye, don't see me as I really am. He's quite the ridiculous character himself. 

She nods enthusiastically, as if the idea was hers in the first place. Too accommodating. Too kind. Kindness can be deathly. Which – beyond the point, if he is going to go anyway. The hands who hold him now are much more welcoming as a certain idea of death, much more than his brain turning on him, much more than forcing a friend to shoot him.

"You're going to miss your plane," she says, pressing that mint-flavored mouth against his again.

He's never missed a plane before.

Is it too late for him?

 

 

_This is the last time I lie to you_ , Coulson thinks as he leaves her room, Skye looking at him from her pillow, eyelids heavy, lips parted like in remembrance of a last kiss. But he doesn't think about it, the idea of a last kiss, it's unbearable where it used to be the point.

Last time he lies to her.

He's not sure he can make that promise – _no promises_ , he told himself no promises when he began this, because he would only break them, because Skye deserves better.

But.

He decides he's going to tell her.

He's going to tell her everything.


	3. bande à part

This thing with Skye makes him, ironically, feel closer to the team.

He ends up practicing in the shooting range with Trip most afternoons. The discipline helps, anyway. It's a part of the countdown, he figures, but so far his body still can do some of its old tricks.

He knows he doesn't have time for this; this is waste, taking a breather just to be with the team, it would seem wasteful. Life can't stand still now. He can't wait for it to settle. Idling the days away when there's so much to do. Idling the nights away with Skye.

This is the kind of thing he should have enjoyed as a young recruit – and he did, in a way. Disciple was comforting. But he never got to be competitive like the rest of them. He just wanted to do his job.

This is difference. There's nothing more to prove. There's no time for it: whatever is good or bad inside of him that's all there is, no changing it now. Maybe remembering, maybe taking it back. Change? No, he can't change. 

"Not bad, sir," Trip says one afternoon where Coulson is particularly right on target.

"Care to make it interesting?" Coulson asks.

Trip gives him a smirk. "I'm listening."

"You have a 1947 Dutch camera wristwatch, I know," Coulson says, before he can deny it. "It's not as good as the Polish ones but it's a nice one."

"I _might_ have one of those. What do you have I might want, Director?"

"What about the original SSR seal. Same model that stamped the documents of the Super Soldier program."

The other man considers it, drop his gaze to the gun in his hand for a moment.

"That would make an excellent Christmas present for my mother."

"Then I apologize to your mother," Coulson says. "Because I'm a really good shot."

Trip grins.

"We'll see."

And Coulson wins their little wager but he makes a mental note to give the stamp to Trip anyway. These are the little things he has to start thinking about. It never occurred to him that last will & testament would matter much in his case. He's gathered some crap over the years and he doesn't have a family, or the family he has needs to be handpicked. Trip is his family.

"You're very important to this agency," he tells him when they are cleaning their guns. "Don't forget that."

"Sir?"

Sometimes he feels jealous of Trip, and that's not secret. Not even, he suspects, to Trip. The man is connected to something Coulson can only dream about. He never put any weight on bloodlines, because he needed to believe it didn't work like that. His father was a common criminal, his name doesn't carry any meaning and it will die with him. He didn't grow up with stories of SHIELD's origins and he never carried himself with the pride of knowing _this, this is where I belong_. That's too easy, of course, the envy, and who knows if maybe Trip hated it, when he arrived at the Academy, being singled out for it. Everybody wishes for a different life. Coulson sure does right now. Still. What is he compared to Agent Triplett, if he thinks about it?

The fact that he is Director now, even due to convenience, is quite ludicrous.

"You're legacy," he says to Trip, feeling he should have said something to this effect before. Leaving everything to the last minute, he didn't use to be like this. "The real kind. From before HYDRA dug its claws into everything. New SHIELD should honor that legacy. Whatever this turns out to be, you are going to play a big part, I'll make sure of that."

Trip considers him for a moment and Coulson realizes he is indeed talking like a dying man, dropping hints here and there.

Trip doesn't ask him if there's something wrong with him. He's far too sensitive for it. Too smart. If Coulson had wanted to tell him something he'd have already done so. So there's a moment of frowning instead, and then Trip's easy smile, accepting his words. Trip's easy smile. Coulson envies everybody else's lives.

 

 

They look more amicable in public and people in the team – specially Trip – look relieved that the row is finally over. Coulson hasn't thought about how pushing Skye away had cracked the whole fundation of the team. He has much to apologize for but he doesn't have the time. He doesn't want to know if people assume things about them. They would be wrong. He finds it difficult to shake the dream of their night, squalid as it is, and watch her go about her day, train, design missions, go out on the field. He fears the bite of obsession, if that's where this is leading (but obsession shouldn't be this light, this sweet and weightless), knowing that he had pulled away from it all his life. He's never given another human being _too much attention_ , it always felt like a weakness or a mistake or a distraction. He always believed men – specially men of his age, whatever that means, whatever that has meant since Coulson turned thirty-five and started thinking about what other men of his age did or wanted or dreamed about – could get a bit ridiculous with too much feeling. It was a concern.

That's what young people do, after all, lose themselves in another. 

Let's be young and reckless, he tells her, wrapping his fingers around her thigh and pushing against her. Everybody else in the Playground is asleep and everybody else in the Playground is glad they are speaking to each other again, in public. They are glad because they don't know what they are saying to each other in private. Let's be young and reckless, Skye repeats, shakily, arching her hips against him.

 

 

The lab is its own place now. No longer confined to the cargo bay of the Bus, looks like a proper lab. It's not something Coulson feels tempted to be nostalgic about. He appreciates the air of efficency of the new place.

He still finds it hard to look at Fitz. Part of him knows that's doing the man a disservice. Coulson shouldn't have felt like he had to protect him from Ward in the first place, so he shouldn't feel like he failed. But two inexpert agents like Fitz and Simmons; he was bound to feel like that, not like holding their hands or babysitting them (other bosses were good at that, and were popular for it, Coulson was never the type, and he didn't have the reputation of a warm man in part because of this), but like they were his responsibility in more than one way. That's the word he like and uses for himself a lot – responsibility. It's a barren, dead word.

(He never felt that way with Skye: he sent her to dangerous mission without other thought than her skills and her competence and the fact that she had survived more than any of them could imagine, probably. Right up until the moment she got shot _because of him_ , Coulson never harbored any particular sense of responsibility for the girl but for the way he felt her mistakes were his too, because he chose her, but not because he felt it was necessary to protect her)

Nobody here is at fault, which is why he shouldn't find it difficult to speak to Fitz. Because difficulty to speak to Fitz is an insult. Could he have done something more to toughen the young man, prepare him for the world on the field? Sure, but that wouldn't have stopped him from being dropped to almost certain death in the ocean. Pushing him harder wouldn't have changed a thing.

Coulson asks him if he can watch him work for a while as he examines the remnants of a crime scene.

Fitz moves his shoulders but Coulson doesn't know if it's in agreement or displeasure.

"It's just," he says. "It's some breakdown of the e– it's just that I'm trying to figure out where the pices of cloth...?"

"Where it came from?" Coulson finishes.

Fitz nods.

"Do you mind if I stay with you for a while?" Coulson asks.

Fitz looks confused for a moment.

"It's really – _boring_? I'm not sure, I'm not –"

Coulson tentatively pulls one of the lab stools to his side and sits on it.

"That doesn't matter. I've never really watched you and Simmons work." He pauses. "You are very good at what you do, Fitz."

The younger man regards the line with some alarm.

"Thank you, sir," he replies, finally.

"We don't have to talk if you don't want to."

Fitz makes a non-commital noise but he seems to agree because he goes on with his work.

He never thought about Leo Fitz for too long before all this, other than as a member of the team. Before Ward, and before May told him that she had handpicked his team, that it wasn't really _his_ team. In a way that's okay, now. He didn't pick Fitz. Fitz is a person, not a member of a team he chose. It's fine, it's just fine. I see you, he wants to say. But he has said that already, some other time. Hasn't he? He's beginning to get everything mixed-up.

 

 

He doesn't go to her when he is tired.

He wants to present a fiction.

(Wants to _become_ a fiction; he hasn't read the books, but that sort of character -languidly romantic and existential but brave- would appeal to him right now)

Even if he told her he was dying Skye wouldn't believe him, not without details. Not without getting to the bottom of it all. 

But then it would all change. This illusion of levity – he likes it and he needs it. If he is exhausted, if he is scared, if he is stressed, he doesn't go to Skye. He can't stand the idea of her seeing him like that, not yet. He needs the fantasy, the music, the laughter, a bit longer. There's no time, so it's vital to hold on to all that for a bit longer. A few days, he decides. Just a couple of days.

 

 

"I thought you didn't approve of more takeouts, sir," Simmons says when she realizes what he's brought her.

He doesn't tell her that he is indulging himself by indulging her. He actually enjoys his little visits to see how she is doing, not just because he worries. But because she has to be lonely, she didn't have to say, surrounded by HYDRA agents all day long, people who not only can never know who Simmons really is, but people so fundamentally opposed to everything she represents... she must feel so alienated by that knowledge. Coulson knows something about long-term undercover, but only second hand. In this field Simmons has a lot more experience than him. Months.

He sets the table. Even Mexican takeout deserves to take out the plates and cuttlery.

Simmons looks exhausted too. A lot older since his last visit. But also – kind of _admirable_ to him.

"Everything okay?" he asks.

"Smashing, actually. Since the incident with Donnie Gill. And that worries me, I've realizes maybe I don't want to be the kind of person who finds it easy to do well in HYDRA."

"That's you being competent, Simmons," he says. "Don't second guess it."

"Thank you."

She's so warmly genuine with her thanks Coulson can barely stand the pang of happiness he feels. He is going to miss her. He is going to miss everybody.

"You are doing a good job here and we've got your back."

"I sure hope so," she says, widening her eyes. "I got to work everyday wondering why there isn't a panic button."

Coulson stands up, touching Jemma's shoulder for a moment. He mutters something about cleaning up.

"We're not about to leave you here on your own," he tells her. "And Agent May is in on the plan, too. So."

So what? He is about to slip. About to mention that if he dies before Simmons finishes her mission she won't be left stranded in HYDRA with no one at the other side of her communications. He took that choice with death in mind, like so many. He can't be irresponsible while people like Simmons are risking their lives for SHIELD. He needs back up.

Simmons, preoccupied with her own fate, doesn't seem to pick on his tone.

He takes out the dessert.

 

 

He does tell her, eventually, on his own, when he can no longer hide the symptoms. Not from her. Everything was easier when he didn't spend time around her. Everything was worse.

"So you _were_ trying to recover some sort of lost youth," she points out.

Her tone is... complicated. He can't tell is she is too angry or not angry enough. He's resting against the headboard and Skye is straddling his lap. She is undoing his tie. Her face is almost unreadable.

"Not really," he admits, looking at her body, her beauty. "I never did this when I was young. I never did much of anything, really. I've wasted my life."

Last time I'm in love, maybe, Coulson thinks. Or is it the first?

"Your life is not over," she says.

He tilts his head. "Isn't it?"

They don't make promises to each other but he would like her to promise that it's not.

She slips the tie off his neck, folds it and places it beside him.

"Now that you've told me everything, we can start solving this. Come on, this is what we do. We fix it."

He can't think of solutions, he never could. He can't think of solutions when Skye has seen him as he is now.

She has seen him _like that_. She has seen him shake with the uncontrollable need to carve the symbols. Skye doesn't just know, she has seen. Everything he was scared of. He doesn't know where he stands anymore. Was she troubled by it? Disgusted? Did she pity him? Her face didn't say. She listened when he told her to stay away, not to touch him, just in case.

"I didn't want you to see me like this," he confesses, looking at his hand. He's fine now.

"You were worried about that?" Skye says, like he's such an idiot. He knows that face quite well. He is beginning to believe maybe he is such an idiot.

She takes his hand in hers. It's simple but effective.

He is not untouchable. He knows that. He's been with Skye quite a lot of times by now. But maybe he needs to know _right now_. She digs her fingertips into his palm. He knows, right now. Skye can touch him.

"I don't know what I'll become," he tells her.

She frowns. She lets go of his hand for the moment, pressing her palms against his chest lightly, running them up and down his shoulder. Is this a gesture of comfort or frustration? Or both?

"But I know who you are," Skye tells him. "And you know who I am. If I started losing it because of the GH-325 too... Would you think that I'm some kind of broken thing?"

"No, of course not."

She nods slightly. She has him there.

"So. Don't worry about _that_. Let me help."

"You're helping already."

She leaves little kisses around his neck, soft as an insect leaving its trail.

"How am I helping?" she asks.

He touches her hair. Can he touch her now? Is she too angry or not angry enough? Is she still angry? She's kissing him, kissing the spot above his collarbone that she favors, already an habit, already a tie that's been formed and he regrets that because she will regret it, when it's gone. She is kissing him but that doesn't mean he is allowed to touch her.

He does anyway, the soft hair behind her ear, soft in a different way than the rest. He favors this spot, like he favors letting his hand drop from there to the spot where her shoulder meets her neck.

"My life is so much interesting since I met you," he mutters against her cheek.

She throws her head back and frowns. She goes back to being Skye, not the body of a lover he can only approach by parts. Skye is not the spot where her neck and her shoulder meet. Skye is not his kisses on her body, or hers on his body. Skye is the way she is looking at him now.

"You were the agent in charge of Iron Man for a while," she says, a tilt of the head, reminding him she has studied his file and she remembers every little detail. "It can't get much more interesting than that."

"Yeah, but that wasn't personal," Coulson replies, and he shudders to think about how detached he was during those days. He shudders to think about what disconnected life he led.

"And picking a homeless hacker from her van was?"

Maybe Skye is the spot on the inside of her elbow where her upper arm and her arm meet, because he is touching her there right now.

"Turned out to be," he says.

She grabs his head in her hands. Skye is the way she is looking at him right now, searching his gaze. Her eyes are old and kind and sad.

"Nice flirting but I still need to know you're okay," she tells him.

"But I'm not," Coulson argues.

"Then _I_ need to believe you will be."

He doesn't want to have to lie.

She takes his hands and pushes him to one side, pressed down against the pillow. Perhaps he doesn't need to lie, just hold her like this, just kiss her like this. This is the soft part of the night, after the hurry but before the tenderness. Coulson doesn't mind making ties himself – a habit, the shape of Skye's mouth above his fingertips, kissing them like Coulson is a sacred object, he doesn't regret that, won't regret that, he'll be dead before having the chance to regret that.


	4. mes nuits sont plus belles que vos jours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the belated chapter. I'm having some sort of writing crisis here. The rest will be up shortly.

"Let's say you are dying, for the sake of argument," she starts.

Coulson studies her face, still skeptical of his premise. He is not dying, her face is saying. You are not dying but I'll indulge you anyway.

He nods, conceding _her_ premise for now. "Okay."

She has him in her favorite position; he is sitting, propped on his bed, back against the headboard and she is straddling him gently and even when completely clothed like now she can do wonders in this her favorite position.

"I get it, you know. Why would you want to do this stuff, if you thought you were dying. I think I'd be like that too."

He runs his fingers across her upper arm. He can't think about that. She should never have to think about that, or feel like she is running out of time. Skye is too alive and lively and present. She is the opposite of death. Coulson picked her for a reason.

"Wouldn't you want to do all the things you never got to do?" she asks him.

"I thought that was what we were doing here," he says, playful, wrapping his fingers around the shape of her hips.

She traces the outline of his ear very slowly. "You could get an earring. Or, hey, what about a tattoo?"

Coulson smiles. He is willing to become ridiculous for this, but not _that_ ridiculous.

"Not really my style," he tells her.

Her fingers drop to his cheek, the line of his jaw, cupping his chin. She always looks at him between curiosity and something more intense. She spends quite some time looking at him, all in all. Coulson has the feeling it has been a long, long time since someone has looked at him this much, this often, this intently. He's always been the kind of man people tend to gloss over, even with lovers – they didn't look at him much. It was always an advantage when it came to the job, a certain kind of invisibility. But now he would like to be seen.

"I think you would look good with an earring," Skye is saying. "Ridiculous, but good."

He shakes his head. "You're not talking me into it."

She wiggles her eyebrows. It shouldn't be sexy.

"I got it," she says.

"Yes?"

"Something very juvenile."

"I'm scared," Coulson says, grinning as he slips his hand under her black t-shirt.

"Let's get drunk."

 

She gets him drunk.

Even that sentence is liberating in itself. It's sweet on the tongue. Skye – gets – him – drunk.

She prepares a concoction three fourths the cheapest vodka available on earth and one fourth... he doesn't want to look too closely, some sort of sweet hazelnut liquor. Though it doesn't look very scientific, the measures, when Skye starts mixing.

The kids drink it, she says, tempting him, against his skeptical face. She has her shut-up-and-do-as-I-say face, which Coulson dearly loves.

She hooks her fingers into the knot of his tie and loosens it, sitting him on one of the stools of the rec room while she pours the shots.

She sits close to him and of course that's the point, getting drunk together, not getting him drunk.

The drink the first couple in silence. It's awful. Coulson can barely stand it, the taste is so bad. But he is so happy tonight.

"Are you a heavy drinker?" she asks him, because Skye always wants to know stuff. Coulson doubts anyone has ever been this interested in him, either, even other lovers. "You are pretty attached to the bar in the Bus."

"It's a beautiful bar."

A bullshit non-answer.

She has the bottle in her grip, running her fingers up and down the neck. She's doing it again. Maybe not but – it's just _everything_ she does.

He takes her hand in his, bringing those fingers to his mouth, pressing his tongue against the underside of her index.

"Oh," she breathes, surprised at the contact, enjoying it.

"It's an ops thing," Coulson tells her. "But I was never – I didn't want to do that. Garrett, May, Hartley, they always had a drink after a mission, two after a tough mission."

"You didn't," Skye says.

"Perhaps I should have. I got it into my mind that I didn't want to use it like that. Drinking was drinking, not a tool to dull bad experiences. That was around the time when I started appreciating it, licquor, started knowing how to tell a good scotch from a crappy one."

"Ah, you and your luxurious tastes," Skye says mockingly, lifting a shot glass towards him.

He takes it. "Me and my luxurious tastes."

He downs the shot in one go. Still pretty repugnant, but it's beginning to acquire some sleazy charm.

"This is not luxurious," Skye says, and there's a hint of challenge in it. Maybe she's not talking about the drink. She should know he is not his luxurious tastes. He is somewhere else. Skye should know where. Find me, Coulson pleads in silence.

He shakes his head and wraps one hand around Skye's arm, pulling her to him. She tastes like cheap vodka and like Skye underneath. He stays in this moment. It's not dangerous, he thinks, it doesn't feel dangerous, to be kissing here, in a common space, in open view to anyone who would happen to pass by. It doesn't feel like it matters at all, to be drinking and kissing Skye, even for the Director of SHIELD, even for Phil Coulson. He is relaxed, pliable in Skye's hands, compliant in her mouth, the sharp anodyne taste of vodka rolls back and he can see the point of the licquor mixed there somehow, sickly sweet but isn't that a good thing? Excess of sweetness. How can sweetness be a thing to have in excess? How can Skye's mouth be a mistake? It doesn't seem possible.

She pulls at his hair a moment and then breaks the kiss – no, no, don't go, what are you doing – with a strange smirk, freeing her hands and lips to pour another couple of shots.

"So. What kind of drunk are you?" she asks.

"Excuse me?"

"You know how some people get in a certain way when they drink too much? They get happy or touchy or giggly... Miles always ended up humming, singing. It was weird." She touches his face, his nose, the lines around his mouth. "I bet you are a sad drunk. You look like a sad drunk."

She's not exactly wrong.

"Maybe a pensive drunk." She nods, her thumb pressed to the side of his neck. "You?"

"I don't know. Aggressive drunk? Judgemental drunk? I don't do it often, actually. Get drunk. Despite my reputation. I don't like losing–"

"– control?" he finishes. He doesn't know why he is smiling.

She pushes his face away, a joking fist brushing Coulson's chin.

"Smartass," she declares.

He can hear it in her voice. The chords relaxed, the voice a little higher than usual. She's not drunk yet but she is not immune. It's too warm all of the sudden and Coulson loosens his tie some more.

"Do you remember Camilla?" he asks.

" _Comandante_ Reyes? How could I forget her?" Between the drink and Skye's deficient Spanish he is thoroughly amused by her tone.

"She said I was having a midlife crisis, that's why I had this team, why I surrounded myself with young, beautiful people."

He searches her face, to see if she has any reaction to the implication.

"More like an afterlife crisis," Skye says, snorting.

He looks at her. She has to be some kind of practical joke the universe has been pulling on him. Right? The shots are beginning to get to his head.

"I hate to think that she was right but _here I am_ , filling that particular cliche."

Skye curls the edge of her mouth, a sympathetic smile.

"Reyes was hot, though," she says, with a hand flourish.

He agrees. "Oh that she was."

" _So_ hot."

Skye's eyes are very wide, and her gaze is somewhere far away, like she is trying to picture Camilla Reyes in all her _hotness_ once more.

He smiles at her, the sweet sting of alcohol bloating his thoughts and words already.

"You're hot, too," he tells Skye, very politely, like he is complimenting her handwriting.

"Yeah, I'm hot, but I'm not Reyes kind of hot," she argues. "I mean, wow. You certainly play in the big leagues."

"I don't know," he says, coyly, grabbing her hand, wrapping his hand around her fingers. "You seem to do all right. You have the Director of SHIELD in your clutches. Trip would walk through fire just to see you smile. And I think Hunter has a crush on you."

She tilts her head. "I think Hunter has a crush _on you_. Believe me, I know how that looks."

He wants to ask what that means. He is still holding her hand. Her skin is so warm. Coulson wonders if it's because he's drunk and everything feels sort of on fire right now, every nerve ending, or because Skye's skin is unnaturally warm. Lance Hunter . What could Coulson do with a woman like Skye if he had the time and the disposition of a Lance Hunter.

"I envy him, though," he admits.

Skye pours them another round.

"Who? _Hunter_? You envy him? Why? He's pathetic."

She doesn't get it. How could she. He doesn't want to be Hunter, but he sees the advantages.

"But he's young," he tells her, trying not to sound too whiny. The filter between his head and his mouth takes a moment to work, with all the shots. "Healthy, strong. Impusive and reckless and ruggedly handsome."

Skye starts grinning with realization.

"Oh my god that's why you wanted him on the team. You're – _you're jealous_. He's like a metaphor, a symbol of something."

Coulson hopes he's not blushing. "A metaphor? This vodka is really good."

She gestures, accusingly.

"He's _you_! Young you."

No, he thinks immediately. He is my father, right before – but he can't tell Skye that. This is meant to be a casual thing. That's the point and the joy of it. Just because he has been foolish enough to fall in love that doesn't mean he is allowed to change the rules. And maybe Skye loves him, too, but that's not why she's here.

"I was never like Hunter. I was appropriate and perfectly shaven, thank you."

Skye gives him a look, like she suspects that's not the whole story. That's not the whole story.

"Well, the person young you maybe wanted to be," she amends. "Sometimes?"

He downs another glass. The drink is not that bad, actually. He has gotten used to the taste.

"Maybe sometimes."

He kisses her again, trying to be as impulsive as the thousands of Lance Hunters out there, curling his fingers around her knee. He never imagined bad alcohol could taste better than good, expensive alcohol. I'm learning so many things, he wants to say to Skye, but he is kind of busy sucking at her tongue, catching her lower lip between his teeth, and his hand slides, palm pressed against the inside of her jeans. She runs her fingers down his chest. He doesn't like losing control either, which is why getting drunk with Skye would have normally been a bad idea. It doesn't matter now. There are other, more important things he has lost control over. He knows what kind of drunk he is now, Coulson thinks, whimpering sweetly when Skye's tongue touches the roof of his mouth. He knows what kind of drunk: the sappy kind. He gets mushy, romantic, and maybe it's a good thing he is too busy to say anything. 

The kiss ends then, but it could have easily gone on.

"We're out of vodka," Skye pronounces.

"We still have this... thing."

"You don't want to," she says, grinning, and she still grabs the bottle of ugly brown drink and goes for it.

She pours two shots of the licquor and they book stare in concentration at her slow movements, like it's very important she doesn't spill a drop for some reason.

"What is going on here?" a familiar voice interrupts.

They look up from their glasses.

"Hey."

"Hey, Fitz."

It's not as catastrophic as it could have been. They are not holding hands or kissing right now, right this moment. But the situation is suspect. They are obviously drinking and they are obviously drunk. Coulson looks down at the state of his clothes. The state of him. The state Skye has put him in. He feels the urge to giggle but he stops himself.

"What the –?"

"We're having a drink," Coulson says, acting all innocent.

"Yes. Why don't you join us?" Skye adds. Such a smart move. Coulson looks at her in admiration. He knows the question will distract Fitz from inquiring exactly why the Director of SHIELD and one of his subordinates are getting smashed at two in the morning in a common area.

This is the first time they almost get caught. It gives Coulson a little thrill. That doesn't say anything good about him.

Fitz would probably blame the flush in their cheeks and necks to the alcohol and not the fact that they had been making out a moment before. Coulson is having fun. He has never been in a secret relationship before. He has never been in a relationship like this before. Then again he has never been dying before.

Fitz declines the offer.

"Well, no, I don't think – what? No, thanks. Is everything all right?"

Skye nods ethusiatically, maybe a bit too much.

"Everything is fine," Coulson tries, hoping it sounds as boss-like as he intended.

Skye waves back at Fitz when he waves good night, awkward and confused.

Fitz walks away definitely wrong-footed and probably suspicious, but not suspicious enough to formulate a theory without further proof. Coulson knows him. He's likely to forget about the whole incident in a couple of days. Because the truth is something unthinkable to Fitz in this case, he could never get there on his own. They are playing with that, Skye and him, taking advantage of certain expectations. The team would never think of that, not straight away, anyway. Which seems strange to Coulson because he had always wanted to fuck Skye, yet no one around seemed to have noticed.

Skye gives the open door a look.

"You don't think that's going to be a problem, right?" Skye asks, gesturing.

She sounds more sober than he feels. How is that possible? Exactly what kind of skills does Skye have?

"Fitz? No. He's okay."

"He is. Isn't he?" she asks heavily.

Coulson smiles at her and nods. She looks relieved. Fitz is getting better and anyone can see it but perhaps Skye needed someone else to say it. He understands why it's more complicated for her than for the rest, to look at Fitz. He knows that kind of guilt very intimately.

"Well," she says, smiling again, and standing up from her stool.

"No more drinking?" Coulson asks, a bit sad the magic of the moment is gone.

"Now comes the best part of getting drunk," she tells him, offering her hand.

Coulson stands up too. Skye's hand is sweaty.

"Which is...?"

"No we go back to your room and try to have sex," she says. "It will be _a disaster_."

He laughs, the filter failing him. His head and mouth and heart are one. "The best part is bad sex?"

"Absolutely. It's an essential part of the getting shit-faced experience."

She urges him to walk out of here. Skye gets him out of here.

"I'm sorry, Skye. I'm not sure I'm physiologically capable of having bad sex," he teases her.

Skye turns around to lead the way, strands of her hair stuck to her skin, damp. That hot skin. All that hair. All that Skye.

"Smartass," she says.

Coulson shrugs. "I'm just being honest."

"We'll see," she says, tugging at his tie.


	5. tout va bien

Skye's knee. Skye's leg. Skye's arm. Skye's neck. Skye's eyelid and her eyelashes which he is touching now. She trembles because it's too soft a part and he's tickling her. She closes her eyes again, like she feels safe in here. Coulson likes the tender parts sometimes, the thin skin, the skin closest to the bones, and sometimes he likes the rough spots better, scars and callouses. Skye's skin suspectedly expectedly young. But who could think about that? He's not some vampire, he is not going to heal just by rubbing his deficient body against hers. Even as a metaphor it wouldn't work. His life is not slowly slipping away in some uncertain future date, it is bleeding out like somebody hit an artery. Skye's youth makes no difference. Or her knee or her leg or her arm. Sometimes he thinks he could have asked anyone else to do this for him, and it might have been better, but – who would be as full of kindness without pity as Skye? Who could be so reckless selfless brave? Who would be without judgement? No, it seems to him that she was always fated to be the bearer of this cross.

"Don't look at me like that," Skye says, stroking his upper arm lazily.

"Like what?"

"Like you're dying."

He smiles at her, like it could be a private joke; like it is a joke, surely, no one is dying, we are just fooling around, we are just laughing at it, it's not real, it won't happen. It won't come. We are just having fun with this our grim joke. It just adds to the excitement. The overexcitement. Because anything is a good excuse to put them in a state. Two curious youths like them (Coulson is reclaiming it, reshaping it, lying about his past) would know at least those words in French, _la petite morte_. Though he is not exactly sure the spelling is right. He should have learned some language, he thinks now, properly and not just the hellos and thank yous the job required. He should have read more books, listened to more records, watched more movies. He is not sure where all that time went, why he didn't do more. He is leaving all this empty. So empty. Perhaps there's the illusion of not-emptiness in this gesture, in Skye's hair tickling his bare legs as she presses her cheek against his knees, resting contentedly.

But there's always the morning.

(until there isn't – how many more mornings until he runs out of mornings to moan about, how long until _last morning, maybe_ )

Mornings are depressing because she is not there to wake up to, not knowing how to ask her to always stay, and the bedsheets no longer remember the warmth or the vitality. Coulson tries, though. To remember. He lingers after the alarm rings, lying on his back, remembering the previous night. The smell helps. The absence of noise outside. He remembers a knee or a leg or an arm. Or nothing so passive – he remembers Skye whispering in his ear the things she was going to do to him and lo and behold because Skye, Keeper of Promises, yes, you could always count on Skye for that. Coulson lies on his back in a cold morning bed and brushes his fingertips across his stomach just like Skye's mouth did the night before, just like Skye's lips. He tries to remember the path, draw it. But then he starts drawing circles and lines and circles inside circles and he remembers death.

 

 

He can't stop thinking about her.

He could be pouring himself the second coffee of the day and be thinking about her.

He could be setting the morning meeting, loading files and arraging overseas connections, and thinking about her.

He could be watching the slow birth of each new SHIELD cell, green dots on a screen like a gardener watches the tender shoots and sprouts, and be thinking about her.

He could be listening to Billy complain about the structure of this building, stout and warm and welcoming but slightly unfit for a more modern idea of plumbing, and be thinking about her.

He could be carving and thinking about her at the same time – this is the dangerous part.

Even when he has her in front of him he can't stop thinking about her. He would be in the middle of the morning meeting, talking about the latest HYDRA plan of world domination and how to abort it, and he would lift his head and she'll be there, at her laptop, typing away, competent and gorgeous and multitasking and so out of reach and he wouldn't be able to stop smiling if even to himself because now a part of himself belongs to Skye, to her beautiful lips and her brilliant mind and her brave heart. He could even be talking _to her_ , discussing a mission, examining new intel together, and Coulson would find himself distracted by thoughts of her. This has never really happened before. Focusing on the job has always come easy to him. He has to accept that he has changed, that he is changing. He wonders if she notices – her face doesn't falter when she talks to him in public, her speech doesn't betray the inflection of a lover. Does she think about him? Perhaps he is just as good and he is not giving himself enough credit here, perhaps his face is just as unreadable as Skye's, perhaps she wonders but would never ask if he thinks about her too, all the time. Maybe they are both masters of the same art and neither of them will know beyond doubt if it was ever love.

 

 

"What is wrong with you?" May asks.

Is it a trick question?

A lot is wrong with me, he thinks. But a lot is right too. To think he couldn't get one without the other.

But that's not what May is asking.

It's a quiet tragedy that May is never asking what she should be asking, or not at the right time.

"I'm fine," he says, lie, incantantion, charm. Busy yourself with some file on your desk, don't meet anyone's eyes. There's a method to this.

It's not that there's no kindness in May's face when she assesses the situation, it's that assessing the situation comes first.

He thinks: you and me, we know each other too much. If we knew each other a little less we might be able to treat each other a little better. But it's not late.

A question of it's too late. It's too late this, it's too late that.

May says: "Look at you, you look like a mess."

"I don't –" but he kind of does, May is right. He tries not to smile, that would piss her off.

He wonders that he doesn't look worse, that it took someone this long to notice. It's not even the illness (though the symptoms are there and his team is very good at not asking questions, at looking away with embarrassed faces), it's that he spends all night up with Skye and every morning daydreaming half asleep about Skye. Hunter's beers keep disappearing from the fridge and he wonders that Hunter hasn't asked around yet.

But he's tired. He's tired around everybody. He's tired of being around people and he's tired of being alone.

"This is unfair," May is saying, "but you _are_ the Director of SHIELD, you have to keep some measure of control." Coulson sees her choosing the words very carefully.

What she means: you have to behave.

Why? Coulson wonders. Why should the Director of SHIELD behave? Why should a dying man behave? He is not his perfect-tailored suits and they are not what should remain of him, in people's memories. Why should a ghost be tidy? Why can't he be dishevelled, unshaven, unapologetic? Coulson has half a mind to do just that – stop shaving. He knows he won't do it. He know he will be a good boy until the very end, despite hiccups like not always buttoning his jacket when he stands up, hiccups like his indulgent nights.

He leans back against the desk, curling his fingers around the edge, conceding May's point in part. He doesn't want to fight with her. There's some fight in him but he doesn't want to waste it on friends.

They stand like that for a bit – in a combative silence because Coulson doesn't want to admit she's right, and May waits for it until she doesn't anymore.

"Don't worry, I don't think Skye has noticed," she adds, friendly, too friendly.

The mere mention of the name makes him panic for a moment. What does May know? What is there to know? What could Skye have noticed? Skye knows _everything_ , including that he doesn't know how to behave, that he is not a proper Director, that he is a ghost.

"Noticed what?" he asks.

She gives him a look that is simultaneously hard and soft, the shoulders slightly high.

"The meeting? You were ogling her, Phil."

He looks at her stunned. No doubt May will mistake one kind of amazement for the other, actual surprise masked by imagined shame at being found out.

"I was?" he asks, trying very hard not to burst out laughing. Of course he ogles Skye, of course he does.

He turns his face towards his shoulder, pretending to pick at the edge of the desk, still too amused with bright and hopeless irony to face his friend.

May is talking again, severe because she needs to be.

"I know you're going through a hard time, Phil," she says. She repeats the name but the thing is sometimes when she uses his first name Coulson feels further away from her. "But you can't do that to her."

Well, she is exactly right there and now there's real shame in Coulson, for a moment, before he interrupts whatever May is resolved to say next (a warning, a threat – some unlikely words of comfort?).

"May," he says, suddenly remembering something very important, something he told himself he should do before this is over.

"What?" she asks, impatient.

"I care about you too," he says.

May steps back, regarding him with suspicion. Not everything is a symptom, May, he thinks. Sometimes it's just me.

"What?"

"I was angry and I never said it back but you mean a lot to me, too."

"Are you sure you're feeling okay?"

He chuckles but it's a bit sad, that a tender declaration of friendship might look like a sign of illness between them. They are not like that, or they shouldn't be. If he could go back he wouldn't let this happen, this horrible shorthand that admits no open affection.

He walks towards her.

Last time he hugs Melinda May, then. Though he wonders how many times this has happened before. He can count their hugs, their gestures of physical affection, with the fingers on one hand. They were all before Bahrain, he realizes as he wraps May's frame in his arms. She is a lot smaller than she looks, you discover that if you hold her. She freezes at the contact, because she still believes something must be horribly wrong with Coulson. Little by little she relaxes against his body, though. He can tell the moment she gives up, too, and though he can't see her face he knows she's closing her eyes, accepting the hug.

Maybe he has already started saying his goodbyes.

 

 

_You can't do that to her._

"Don't look at me like that," he tells Skye that night. Head resting across her knees, cheek against the rough bits of her thigh, her hand pressed against his collarbone.

"Like what?" she asks.

"Like I might live."

It's just a game between them, isn't it.


	6. L'homme qui aimait les femmes

"Why are you doing this, really?" he asks, finally.

Skye cocks her head to one side, playful. 

She shrugs.

"I have my own reasons," she says coyly, running her hands up Coulson's chest. "Do you mind, if I take advantage of you for my own motives?"

He shakes his head. Even though he doesn't know, can't possibly imagine what Skye could be getting out of this. The sex is good, he tries to make sure it's good for her too, but he doesn't think Skye exactly needs it. He knows she has been lonely for a while, but this is a weird way of going about it. He'll let her have her reasons, then. They kiss for a while. His left hand had been trembling all day and Skye is trying to distract him. She raided the kitchen again while Coulson finished some paperwork. One would think impending doom would excuse you from menial bureaucratic stuff. He thinks he has had this thought before.

"I don't mind. But it'd be good to know."

"And I'll tell you my reasons," Skye replies. "But not yet. Okay?"

She climbs onto his lap and Coulson guesses this would constitute _looking like a mess_ , no doubt. Out of his jacket and tie, with his shirt open, his mouth thoroughly kissed into dark pink, Skye in his hands, what a mess. Camping out on midnights and locked doors, it's not enough. Skye has come well-prepared (she always is), with more of Hunter's beer in tow. She is the one who put all that paperwork away from him ( _it'll still be here in the morning – and so will you_ ) and now she is raising the bottle to tempt him, taking a sip to tempt him with that tempting mouth of hers.

"Drinking on the job?" he teases her.

"I'm off the clock," she says. "Unless the mighty Director requires something else of his obedient agent..."

She pushes her hand against him, teasing the shape of his cock through his pants. He feels simultaneously aroused and uneasy about playing such a game. It comes too close to his own misgivings about this situation. Maybe if they had more time he could be sure – but no. He doesn't want anything to taint this moment. He takes the bottle of beer from Skye's hand instead.

She gives him a questioning look, those big eyes.

Always with the eyes, the questioning eyes, the sad eyes, the older-than-earth eyes.

"Where the hell does Hunter get such good beer?" he asks, trying to distract her.

"I think he orders it online," Skye says and rolls her eyes at his expression. "To a secure adress very far from here. Don't freak out, stop being such a Director."

"Sorry."

Skye seems to accept it.

He still worries. He can't turn it off, being either Director of SHIELD or himself, not even at Skye's almighty request. Hunter is not the sharpest tool in the box, he is very much capable of jeopardizing the Playground's secret location for imported alcohol. Or perhaps he is being unkind with that man. Maybe he should trust Skye, if she is not bothered by it. She is just as obsessive as he is about these things – sometimes he wishes she could turn it off as well – and if she says it's okay, it's probably okay. He tells himself to relax. He is here now, midnight encounters and locked doors and slow lovemaking, like some sort of somnambulism of the heart.

"Hey, I have a question," Skye says.

"Yes?"

She takes back the beer, taking a big sip before asking. This back and forth: it _is_ juvenile, but Coulson wants to ask if how come she is such an expert, he wants to be the one asking instead, because he wants to be the one listening to her voice. His own, he is tired of his own voice, he's tired of being left alone with his thoughts and this is more than a distraction but the distraction is essential.

"Do I remind you of some old girlfriend?" Skye asks.

"What?"

"That would work, wouldn't it? Lost youth? Maybe I remind you of someone from those years. You can tell me, I don't mind."

Those eyes are full of a thin thread of evident doubt now. Like somehow it has occurred to Skye that this is the reason drawing him to her in the first place. Like she finds his choice of her ridiculous. Coulson slips his arm around her waist reassuringly. 

"Not really."

He kisses her neck slowly. He slides his mouth over lines of relaxed pliant muscle, draws a deep breath to take in the scent. It's there that the light, cheap perfume Skye wears since he met her is stronger, where sweat from hours of training still pools despite the shower, where Coulson is most hopelessly in love, where he kisses her now.

"Tell me about your other girlfriends," Skye says.

The _other_ gives him pause, but it's warm and unassuming. There's no jealousy. 

"Right," he says, as if remembering. "We are using that word."

"I like it. It's a nice word."

He has learned to read between Skye's succint lines, her cautious expressions. It makes him know that she feels safe in that word, appreciated. The profiler part of him tells him she can't have heard it that often.

"Come on, I'm curious," she urges.

First girlfriend was a neighbor, from the block of flats next to the one he and his mother moved into after his father's death. He remembers the girl broke an arm playing around in PE when it was almost Christmas one year. She had to wear a cast all holidays. Coulson remembers signing it lovingly. It's funny what one remembers. The people he once loved, he still loves in some measure, when he remembers. It's funny what one forgets. Did he never love them at all?

"Maybe my second girlfriend," he chooses to say, not that Skye could ever remind him of someone, but that's the closest. "She was a punk girl."

Skye leans back, amused but suspicious. "A punk girl. Yeah, I can picture that."

"A lot of mascara. I was fifteen, she was seventeen."

She smiles. "Going for older women, uh?"

He laughs.

He doesn't offer details –it would compromise their whole _casual_ setting, and he doesn't think Skye is looking for details, more like a good story– but that one was a good girlfriend, funny and kind, a good girl with red leather boots and Blondie and Black Flag and New York Dolls posters tidily put up on the walls of her room. Not the first girl he slept with, but the first one who made him understand what sex was for. She was taller than him. The things one remembers. He remembers the next serious girlfriend, the one he left when he joined SHIELD. He remembers short-lived, easy, youthfully solemn romances at the Academy, specially the girl from Communications, because he made a point not to get involved with people in Ops, thinking he was being reasonable and grown-up oh how he had wanted to be grown-up in his early twenties, how much he resents it now. The people he almost loved. The years of practicalities, sporadic affairs that never broke the skin. The last person he loved – the last person he loved until _now_ he means – and what he remembers the most is a humble gold bracelet Audrey had and said she'd had since she was seventeen, the one she paid with her first professional check from working with a real orchestra, he remembers that story.

For Skye he remembers the punk girl the fifteen year old version of him loved.

"Something like that," he replies. "I was very disappointed when I discovered she bought new jeans and then cut them up at home with scissors. I thought she naturally worn them out."

Skye grins, giving him a little kiss, a sweet one, brushing his chin with her thumb. "I'm sorry. Girls are disappointing."

"Guys too," Coulson offers, hooking his fingers into the hollow of her elbow.

A dark cloud passes through her thoughts.

"You don't have to tell _me_."

He scoops her in his arms, dramatically movie-like, so that she won't have to think about that. So she doesn't ever need to think about guys disappointing her, or hurting her, or plotting God-knows-what, menacingly, from the basement. Coulson knows he's disappointing as well and he doesn't have time to make it up to her. He can try a bit. He can push her against his pillow and kiss her ridiculously. He doesn't mind being ridiculous, it's a fair trade.

"Well, well, what do you know, another conquest for Phil Coulson," Skye comments, with his mouth still touching hers.

"Something like that," he replies, smirking.

She is so good at this. At making him feel this.

He knows how he is with women. He is different with Skye. He didn't mean to be. It just happened. Death happened. He doesn't have to pretend or make plans or worry about saying the wrong thing about his job. He doesn't have to impress anyone or live up to a certain useless standard he set for himself a long time ago, when he thought those things were important or necessary, when he took pride in them. He looks into her eyes, fearing that death is a fog that prevents him from seeing her clearly and that he only finds in that gaze what he wants to find. He focuses.

"Hi," Skye says, when he catches him studying her.

"Hello."

My last _girlfriend_ , he thinks, as he slips his hand between Skye's legs, and he believes it's a tragedy if she didn't get to hear the word often so he says it out loud, the last part of it, whispered against her welcoming mouth. Skye is too generous with her smiles. He'll take it, anyway. Selfish, self-centered, doomed in more ways than one.

He's drunk with it, actually. This newfound freedom.

And he knows at some point he will have to come down.

But not yet. Okay?


	7. 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2x07 has rendered this whole fic completely AU. Oh well.

If these are his last weeks, his last days, they are pretty good.

First he goes with May, Trip and Skye to Europe. He takes the Bus for a tour of the few and very secret SHIELD bases out there. He makes the excuse that he needs to check how things are going personally, get a read on the people working with him here, not just faces on a gigant screen on the wall of his office. He wants to know the state of the bases, really, what they need, how he can help. He needs to make preparations. It's a good excuse because it's true. He tries not to think about that inelegant word, _legacy_. He is not that arrogant. He knows he didn't really make a difference, but he wants things to go smoothly after he's gone.

And this is not a vacation but he appreciates Skye's unbridled enthusiam for the mission, it makes it easier for Coulson to pretend this are not just more goodbyes.

"Touching down in an hour," Trip tells them.

"May still not letting you on the stick?" Skye asks. Everybody knows Trip would relish more oportunities to drive the Bus, if only May would let him.

"No," he says. "But I'm wearing her down."

Both Skye and Coulson chuckle benevolently and Trip makes himself scarce while they pull up maps of hidden corners of France, Germany. He is going to miss this. Working shoulder to shoulder – as much as Coulson loves their nights together the days are also exciting.

"I had never been to Europe before I joined SHIELD," Skye comments.

Coulson thinks maybe she shouldn't think about it like it's a good thing, like they did her any favors.

"And you got two bullets in your stomach in the Italian countryside for your troubles," he says.

"I don't regret it," Skye replies, almost surprised, as if suddenly realizing, but with calm, with an intimidating wisdom. Her voice changes. She frowns. "And I used to do that a lot. Regret things. That was my thing."

"We have that in common," Coulson says.

She bites her lower lip.

"When did you first travel to Europe?" she asks.

It's easy to remember, that one. He looks away.

"On a mission, too. I was so impressed. You should see where I was living before SHIELD recruited me. And here I was. In _Europe_. Director Fury's mission, actually. He brought me here for the first time." He turns to look at her, stops reminiscing. It's a grand, romantic tone in which he announces: "I'm sorry I can't take you to Paris."

"It's okay," she says, shrugging. "Someday."

"Skye..."

She walks up to him. Her touch is featherlike on his arm. They are, after all, in public, in the holocom in the middle of a mission. Anyone could walk in. He finds it impossible to care. The problem of immediate future versus nebulous future. Coulson has one, not the other. He has the problem of how he could stop himself from kissing Skye, when she says that, so full of hope.

"Someday," she insists, leaning into him. A self-deprecting smile, saying, ridiculous: "Will you kiss me under the rain like in the movies?"

He's glad he's not the only one with the stupidly romantic notions. But then again, Skye has always been on his side.

"I'll kiss you _everywhere_ ," he tells her, matching her.

Skye pulls back, amused. "I'm going to remember you've said that when we get back to the base tonight."

He doesn't make promises to her, because he can't. He will make this one though.

They don't wait until arriving back at the base. They lock themselves in Skye's bunk. He forgets about being Director and all these lasts months for a moment, because in here, and the gentle drumming of the plane in flight, it feels like the old days, when it was just the team and there was SHIELD solid and all-powerful and Coulson and his agents where either losers or rebels in the eyes of their colleagues. It feels like the old days if he had grabbed Skye by the arm in the old days and pressed her against the door of her bunk and kissed her everywhere. This had never happened in the old days. He'd had his fantasies, of course: vague and unintrusive and almost innocent. He'd had his fantasies but never the courage.

 

 

Despite May's protests, despite the team's surprise, despite his own reservations, he decides to take on more practical work.

It actually helps. It helps him focus, and the job keeps him on his toes. Paperwork makes him bloated. He finds it hard to concentrate. Billy could do most of it. Hell, _Hunter_ could do most of it.

He doesn't take on heavy stuff. A meeting with potential allies there, a drop here.

Today he is someone else (isn't that lucky), on the off-chance the HYDRA rejects will sell them a piece of stolen technology. He just has to make a first contact and keep the target talking long enough for May and Trip to confirm he has the object.

"I find it hard to believe the bad guys don't know the Director of SHIELD's face," Skye comments.

Coulson guesses that having an instantly forgettable face has its advantages. He wonders how long it'll take Skye to forget it. He wants to ask her not to. And knowing Skye she'd probably do that for him. Which is why he doesn't ask.

"They are not the bad guys, just middlemen."

"Still evil, still dangerous."

Is she worried about him? Absurd, in their situation.

"That's why I'm going _incognito_ ," he says, popping up the collar of his pale green shirt. Not his color. Which is the point. He has to look rich and carefree. So nothing further from reality. His favorite undercover mix.

Skye laughs at the intonation of the word, laughs at him and his ensemble, laughs at him, Coulson doesn't mind.

"Who should you be?" she asks.

He shrugs. He likes playing it by ear. "European businessman with mutual friends in Switzerland?"

"Can you do an accent?"

"No," he replies. "Okay, American businessman living in Europe with mutual friends in Switzerland and a disregard for the danger of unknown artifacts."

"I would leave the last part out when you introduce yourself," she says. "You're lucky I prepared some really great fake identity for you. It's in the file."

"Skye. I'm actually good at this stuff," Coulson says, his pride wounded by her doubts.

"I know that," she replies. "But I'm glad May and Hunter are going to carry heavy duty rifles."

So she is worried for his safety. Despite the natural thrill the idea gives him Coulson feels awkward about the fact. He feels like she is cheating her of something somehow. That he has led her on. 

He tries to forget about that. Focus on the job.

He sits on the bed, lounging in some sort of bon vivant posture.

"How do I look?" he asks her.

She narrows her eyes. "Very European?"

"French enough?" he asks, playing their favorite game.

"Absolutely. _Philippe Le Fou_."

He raises his eyebrows, impressed.

"A Nouvelle Vague joke. Where did you learn that?"

Skye narrows her eyes at the condescending question, but then she jumps on the bed, mouth first or hands first, kissing him and touching him in any case.

"What are you suggesting?" she says, lifting her chin defiantly, pressing her hands up against his shoulders. "That I had a crush on my boss and obsessed over every little thing he said? That I just had to know who this _Truffaut_ person was and that led to learning other stuff?"

She kisses him again.

The idea that she was somehow smitten by him that long ago – Coulson knows she's probably only saying this for his benefit but it still makes him feel warm and hopeless. Suddenly he doesn't want to go on a mission anymore. He wants to stay here.

"Did you watch it?" he asks.

"The movie? No. I've seen the posters. Looks cool."

He grabs Skye's hands in his.

"Do you want to watch it? After I come back from the mission?"

She studies his face a moment, the honesty or importance of such a proposal. And it is a proposal.

"A sleepover?" she says, face all lit up by the idea. Skye is just like him, she sees the allure in such simple pleasures. She'd be happy with little. Suddenly it occurs to Coulson that what is happening between them is not his tragedy, but hers. "I can bring my computer here, yeah. I'm up for that. If you want."

The mission goes smoothly enough – _you seem disappointed about that_ Skye points out when they are alone, quite wisely– and he enjoys himself. There's always something enjoyable in pretending to be another person – _specially in your circumstances_ Skye also points out and he makes a grimace because yeah, too wise. She has already set her computer in his room by the time he arrives back at the base, making herself at home in his quarters. When Coulson comes back her hair is wet and she is wearing slacks and a flannel shirt.

"I was training with Trip," she says, noticing his gaze, touching her hair. "Not very sexy, I'm sorry. Do you want me to go change?"

He grabs her hips and pulls her to him, touching his fingers to her damp hair as he kisses her, thinking, You're perfect. You're always perfect. He doesn't say it but he hopes the kiss is enough.

They don't watch _Pierrot Le Fou_ because Netflix doesn't have it and he refuses to let Skye attain a copy illegaly ("We are already watching it illegaly," Skye tells him, "or you think I'll let Netflix know our IP? They could be HYDRA, who knows...") They watch _La Dolce Vita_ instead. Skye makes very favorable comparsions between him and Marcello Mastroianni, while resting her head on his shoulder sometimes and sometimes when she gets tired she rests her legs across his lap. Sometimes it's Coulson the one with his head on Skye's shoulder. It's all horribly domestic – not because it's horrible and he doesn't like it, he loves it, but because it makes him realize how much more of this he would like to have, in the future, in a future that doesn't exist.

The training session with Trip must have been intense because at some point Skye falls asleep, warm arm, warm head, warm heart, against Coulson's body.

"Sorry about that," she says later, ridiculously apologizing for having fallen asleep.

He shakes his head. It's not that she has never stayed over, but it's not something they usually do.

"Can you stay?" he asks. He would probably beg if Skye wanted him to.

She stirs, her whole body stirs, holding Coulson tighter. "That was the plan. Unless you really want to kick me out."

"Not really," he says, casually, whispering against Skye's cheek. She's asleep again in a second, still keeping him in her gentle but vicious grip. Coulson closes his eyes, relaxes under the weight, trying hard to fall asleep, he can't wait to wake up next to her.

 

 

The next mission doesn't go so smoothly.

"At least try not to get hurt," Skye says, examining the bandage around his hand, his fingers.

It's nothing, he wants to say. Because it's really nothing. But he doesn't say that.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Skye smiles, brushing her fingers against the wounded area.

"Well, I guess you did help," she admits.

He was supposed to be taking point, not joining the action. But things had gone south for Trip and Fitz and they needed another pair of boots on the scene. Even if they happened to be worn out and unreliable. In the end Coulson was the only one who came away from it with a scratch.

"You would have been lost without me," he tells her from the doorframe.

"Come here," is all Skye says in reply to his smugness.

He joins her.

The medic gave him some painkillers but it doesn't hurt enough that he needed to take them. And he doesn't want to be groggy. He's in her room, which is unusual. It's smaller, a lot smaller, and warmer. Her bed too, small and warm.

"You were never a rebellious youth?" Skye asks, patting his hair softly.

These non-sequiturs (but not so much, they've been hitting the same subject over and over), he likes them. Her questions. Her interest.

Coulson is lying across her lap, face resting on her stomach. He has his cheek pressed against the rough skin above her navel, her scars. He's found he likes this particular place.

"Of course," he says. It's not something he likes to remember, but with Skye it's okay. "For about a year. In my teens. I was a bit late processing what had happened with my father and I just... went bad. I don't know how else to explain it. Almost drove my poor mother crazy. I promised myself I wouldn't be like that anymore. Tried to make it up to her somehow."

"Be a good boy."

"As much as I could."

Skye touches his face.

He realizes this is a bit too personal. He didn't mean to, he didn't want to unburden himself.

He feels unfinished here. Incomplete, like he is not yet a fully formed person, like he is not done growing up. He's not a finished work. And being with Skye only makes the anxiety worse, the insidious pressure of every book he never read, ever restaurant he never got to try, every movie, record, lover. The hours he never spent like this, resting on the stomach of a woman he loves.

He turns over on his back, looking up at Skye. From this angle she looks a stranger, monumental, close but almost unreachable. He's seeing her from different perspectives these days. A more complete, more complicated survey of Skye.

And on top of everything now he wants to tell her about his past, now he wants somebody to hear about the things he never wanted to tell anyone before, things he liked to pretend never happened. And for that somebody to be Skye. But this wasn't the plan.

"This doesn't feel very _casual_ ," he says to her. "I'm sorry."

Skye shakes her head. "I don't mind."

She bends down to kiss him.

"My rebellious phase lasted a lot longer," she tells him, gently treading her fingers through his hair again. "You were lucky, you had someone you wanted to be a good boy for. Someone who worried." She pauses. "I'm glad you did."

Her voice sounds a bit distant, understandably.

He turns on his side again, pressing his face against his belly, the welcoming fabric of her sweater, slipping one arm under her legs, resting his injured hand on her knee. Skye's hand drops to his neck, she makes a pleased sound as he settles against her body. He doesn't care too much about the uneven Pietà-like picture they must make. He thinks they fit each other well. He didn't know that before, didn't know what fitting really meant.

Not that it would make much difference, really, but Coulson is glad he didn't get killed on the field today.

 

 

"I'm dying," he tells her, finally adding: "And it's not fair to you."

He never made her any promise. Well, he couldn't. They never promised each other anything. They never said anything about falling in love.

"I made this a lot harder for you," he adds.

It's true. He's not oblivious. She is more attached now than she would have been. It will be a lot worse now, afterwards. He should have thought about it. He shouldn't have assumed this could be simple. He had wanted to be selfish and she is the one who will end up paying the price.

Skye kisses him again.

He feels cold under her warm mouth.

"Don't worry about me," she says.

He knows eventually he is going to ask something else from her.

Skye can't save him, but she can do the next best thing.


	8. La Mariée était en noir

But the bad days are really bad.

The bad days are hand-trembling, sweaty-body, mind-a-mess kind of days. They are hot and pitiless.

He doesn't want Skye here on the bad days, but he never knows how to tell her that he doesn't want her here. Eventually he always regrets that thought, eventually at some point during the night he ends up being glad she's here. He doesn't want her to see him like this, but he needs her to see him like this.

"I don't want to die," he says. He tells her. 

"I know."

"I thought I had accepted it," he adds.

It comes and goes, these days, the acceptance, the calm he swore knowing his fate gave him. He's losing the certainties of certainty, losing the advantages of his own doom. He doesn't have any of the clarity fear promised to bring him, just the fear.

Skye runs her fingers through his hair, in a rhythm.

"You can't accept something like that, you have to fight," she tells him. "I thought I was dying when Quinn shot me. But part of me didn't believe it, you know? That's how I held on until the team came, until you found me."

He wants to gloss over the fact that she wouldn't have been there in that cold cellar bleeding out if it wasn't for him. He wants to gloss over the sudden terror he still gets remembering the incident, that first vision of Skye, white and red, dying by the door.

It's easier to think about his own death, actually.

"I wanted to do this with dignity," he confesses. Though chasing girls half his age doesn't speak much to his dignity. More like the opposite. "Without rage."

Skye sits up on the bed, holds his arms against the matress. She's just wearing a shirt – one of his, actually. She always asks if he minds, when she wears his clothes, she always asks permission, as if this wasn't a fantasy of his. He wants her to wear everything he owns. He wants her to own everything he owns. He wants her to own him.

She's looking at him very seriously now, though.

"But you _should_ be pissed off," she tells him. "You should rage."

He props himself on one elbow.

He has tried to explain to Skye before, how he is wired to accept the situation he's in. Part of his training, he hopes, and not part of his disposition.

"I've never really raged in my life. I'm not sure how to do it."

She leans back against the headboard. Her lips curl in a reminescence of some sort. He would never classify Skye as enigmatic (he would never _classify Skye_ ) but sometimes she gets a look to her that Coulson finds unknowable, unnerving, sad.

"I know what you mean," she is saying now. "I should have raged more."

He nods, looking into her eyes. "You _should_ have raged. Look at your life, Skye. Why aren't you raging all the time?"

"I should. Right?"

She should. He doesn't understand Skye at all – how Skye came to be Skye, when all the pieces which make her up should form something else entirely. He doesn't get it. She shouldn't be allowed to be this kind. The world doesn't deserve it.

"Yes," he tells her, wishing for big, wonderful things for her, knowing he could never make them come true himself.

Skye gets pensive for a moment, brushing her hand against his knee.

"Let's rage together," she says, with a note of urgency. 

"What?"

"Yes. Now. Right now," she decides. She decides. That's okay. "Tell me how angry you are about what's happening to you."

It's so big it's unthinkable. It's so big he can't find the voice. And because of Skye. She has made the anger worse. The lack of time and future and hope sharper. It's not her fault. She meants the opposite. This is how it turned out. It's not that surprising, Coulson knows: he is always messing things up, despite the best intentions. Despite the worst intentions. Of course he's angry.

"I'm... _very_ angry."

Skye throws one shoulder back, unimpressed.

"Gee, boss. That sounds really drastic."

"It's unfair," he says, lowering his voice but in a much, much dangerous tone.

"What is?" Skye asks, goading him on. "Tell me."

"It's unfair," he repeats. "I don't deserve this."

"No, you don't."

And he knows that's not how it works, he knows that better men than him have suffered worse fates. That it's never about what you deserve – or Skye wouldn't be here with him, with her collection of scars.

"We're good people, Phil," she tells him, squeezing his arm. "We don't deserve the lives we've got."

Maybe she is right. Life is a horrible, unfair thing. How do you get even?

Coulson grabs Skye by the arms and presses her against the matress very suddenly, searching for the answer.

There's an almost unbearable silence in the room right now. They normally have some music on – something sentimental he favors. Now he can hear Skye breathing more elaboratedly as it goes on, this moment. She's close to panting, waiting for him to do something. He studies her seriously, studies his own anger.

He unbuttons the shirt she's wearing, parting the fabric to expose Skye's breasts. The light inside his room is always dull, flat, and Skye's body never looks as gorgeous as she really is. If he could get out of here. Just for a while. He wants to get out of here. It's hard to pretend you're someone else in a SHIELD secret base. He runs one finger between her breasts with a frown on his face, like a doctor unhappy with the evolution of a patient, or a painter wishing his hand worked as beautifully as his visions. Skye trembles into the touch when he holds his palm to her belly.

He doesn't want this to be gentle and sweet. He wants the anger. And Skye says he can have it, she says he is entitled to it.

It's no time for being ridiculous and romantic, or soft. It's like a bad parody. Death into anger. Death into sex. Coulson is too American to say this with a straight face, he knows this. But here he is, anyway.

He holds both Skye's wrists in his hand, above her head. Something overpowers him, a kind of hatred, but it's not ugly and it's not against Skye. Something like a purifying fire, inside his veins. He presses, prodes, squeezes his fingers around Skye's arms tighter, immobilizing her or attaining some kind of illusion of immobilizing her. Skye stares back at him, defiance in her eyes, giving him an illusion of struggle for a moment, to let him know she knows the game. She knows it's a game. Coulson is showing his teeth here. To melt resistance when the resistance is not real.

"You can stop me whenever you want," he says.

"I don't want to stop you," she says. She sounds as honest as she's ever done.

He fumbles to shove her underwear down, his eyes never leaving Skye's face.

He pushes two fingers into her without warning. Skye's breath hitches, then she tilts her head on the pillow and smirks at him, pushing her hips down against his hand. He watches her intently and she stares him down, like a challenge between them. She moves with him, accepting him. 

"You want this, don't you?" he asks, his tone either flat or too ecstatic.

"I want it," she replies. "Come on."

God. She's perfect. She's his perfect match. 

He doesn't want to force his anger on her, he wants to share it. He wants an accomplice not a victim. Skye is wearing his clothes now but she can't feel his body breaking. If only she could. Maybe if he gets close enough – he wants her to feel it.

He presses his fingertips into her wrist. Skye moans.

"Beg," he says and Skye begs.

"Come," he says, and Skye comes.

Later he wraps his fingers around her knee and draws her legs further apart.

He strokes her cheek and Skye can smell herself in his fingers. He pushes his thumb against the line of her lips, slipping it inside her mouth. 

"You're always so quiet. Why is that?"

Skye gives him another defiant look. He moves his hips between her legs, his hard cock pressed against the inside of her thigh.

"I want to make you scream," he says. He barely recognizes his own voice. "I want you to scream my name."

"You're welcome to try," she tells him with a confident smile.

Of course when she screams she inevitably calls him _Coulson_ and that's fine with him – because as much as this is a escape he doesn't want to be anyone else but himself in her arms.

 

 

"Did I-?" he asks her afterwards, kissing the skin on her wrists, where he held her down.

Skye rolls her eyes. "Hurt me? Are you crazy? No. Where you not here when I came? _Both_ times."

She is direct and dirty.

She grabs his chin in her hand, bringing his mouth to hers for a second.

God. She's perfect. What is he going to do.

He helps her into the shirt again, does the buttons up carefully. It feels strange to be dressing her again in his own clothes. It feels strange to be dressing her, devotional. He leaves the first two buttons undone and leaves a kiss on the hollow of her neck. Skye shivers, pleased.

"Do you want to get away? For a couple of days?" he asks.

The idea hasn't occurred to him now, he just wants to pretend it has. To pretend he's someone more impulsive, instead of someone who has already done the research but who wasn't sure if it was right to ask. After tonight he figures he might as well ask.

"You and me?" Skye asks. He nods. "Like a – vacation?"

"More like a break."

_Vacation_ sounds too permanent, too hopeful. Like something they might even get to do more than once.

"Are you taking me to Paris?" she says, grinning, bending one knee and shifting on the bed to get closer.

"No. We don't have the time. Sorry."

"That's fine. I'll be happy wherever you take me."

He suspects that's true, and it feels like a shot to the heart. And he knows what that feels like, it's not just an expression. He thinks about taking her to Paris. He thinks _Someday_. He hates himself for thinking it. What the hell is he going to do.


	9. le bonheur

_Last time I drive Lola_.

And it's not a bad scenario.

Driving at night through what could be the twisting, narrow roads of a little village on the Côte D'Azur. It's not, of course. Escape is escape but reality sometimes can only offer some pretty, anynymous Californian town. He had wanted to give her Paris once, and the sound of trains passing near and black and white rain. Now he settles for a couple of days in a refurbished bed and breakfast. Less than a couple of days, he can barely afford one and a half. But from afar the picture matches, the gentle slopes of the town, the car, the pretty girl in the passenger's seat.

 

 

This is more of an adult fantasy, he admits. There's nothing youthful or rebellious about a quaint little room in a village wich makes excellent wine. Their little room. 

"I figured," Skye says, as they check in past midnight. "Is this the type of place where you bring all your conquests?"

"My conquests," he smiles as he kisses her neck.

He does feel a pang of guilt thinking this was exactly the kind of vacation he had planned with Audrey before his death. Not in this part of the country, but that's just a detail.

"This must have been hard to hide from the team," Skye says, bringing him back to reality as she sets her computer in the little desk they have in the room. 

"Who says I'm hiding it? There'll be _a scandal_ when we get back," he teases. Then: "May knows we are investigating the symbols together. I told her we were after a clue and that it was personal."

He watches Skye's frown.

"I don't like lying to May," she says. "Don't get me wrong, sneaking around is fun and we are super good at it. But lying..."

You won't have to lie for much longer, Coulson thinks. But he can't say that. He can't make her sad. Sadder. Not right now. So he doesn't say that or tells her to keep on lying. He touches the back of her neck and feels the tension there.

"Are you tired from the trip?" he asks. Skye nods, leaning back against his touch. 

"Yes, but Lola drives like a dream," she says. "Mack did a great job. But I'm a bit tired."

Coulson presses his mouth under her ear. "Relax then. Get out of those clothes and get into bed. I will fuck you so slowly you'll think you're going crazy."

Skye chuckles, turning around to face him.

"That sounds nice – but I think we should have a fight."

"A fight?"

"In all those movies the couples are always having big, epic fights. Screaming at each other. Girls locking themselves in the bathroom. It's supposed to be passionate."

"And we're not passionate?" he asks.

"Yeah, but think about it, we haven't had a fight or an argument since we've started... you know. We get along too well."

"We've always gotten along too well," he tells her, which is true and part of why he had always liked her a little too much for his own good. "But you are welcome to lock yourself in the bathroom if you want. It's a really nice bathroom. Huge bathtub."

Skye gives the door a diffident glance.

"Maybe tomorrow," she says, yawning. "Let's go to bed and you do... whatever you said you were going to do to me."

But she's fast asleep by the time Coulson finishes helping her out of her jeans. He folds her clothes and leaves them on one of the chairs. He smiles at the very undignified image of a sleeping Skye taking up all the space in the king sized bed, sprayed over the covers, head almost ducked under the pillow. Like that she looks so young, but in a way that doesn't make Coulson feel old.

 

 

It's strange to feel so happy so near death. It feels almost like a sin. Not that he has any religious feelings one way or another towards what's happening to him. Justice or injustice, if it's something cosmic he couldn't image a greater intelligence behind. It could be there. He couldn't say he's a convinced atheist like Skye (he knows she wonders if it has more to do with her upbringing than real convictions but that's an answer she'll never truly find, she believes what she believes). He has seen some things. Aliens and demi-gods and good men, and men so evil Coulson wondered about them more than about the otherworldly. In the Academy, while learning the history of SHIELD, the artefacts and the myths, the unthinkable as lessons, he asked May about her faith and she said there was nothing in Christianity as she saw it that was at odds with the idea of Captain America and Red Skull and objects fallen from a strange sky. Coulson wonders if religion could offer him some solace. But then he doesn't really need it. He's happy. Why would he need solace? He's happy with Skye in his arms, sitting between his legs on the soft sand of the beach, and wearing his jacket because the day has turned cloudy. Her hair is still wet and he feels the cold when she leans back against him, and Coulson presses his face into the back of her neck. She makes him so happy.

A 24-hour vacation is not worth much (nothing he can give her is worth much) but they find a shop in town and they buy two bottles of wine. Amazing wine, he informs her. Skye is not a wine person but she says she's willing to try, _if it really is that amazing_.

She found the local bookshop and picked up the most-French-looking book she could find.

"That's going a bit too far," he says, but he likes it when he is in the bathtub –because this place has the kind of bathtub one dreams about and he intends to make good use of it– and Skye starts reading to him from it, sitting on the floor of the spacious bathroom, next to the tub.

"You are the one who brought the French theme up."

"Did I?" he asks, touching one wet finger to Skye's nose.

"Stop it," she laughs. "Listen. _The story of my life doesn't exist. Does not exist. There's never any centre to it. No path, no line. There are great spaces where you pretend there used to be someone, but it's not true, there was no one._ " Skye frowns. "A bit pretentious but I know what she means."

"Too French," Coulson declares, trying to grab Skye's knee.

She squirms playfully out of reach. "Shut up. High school dropout is getting some proper education here." She keeps on reading. " _He's started to suffer here in this room, for the first time, he's no longer lying about it. He says he knows already she'll never love him. She lets him say it._ " Then her face changes into something like annoyance. "You know the girl in this book is fifteen, right? What the hell is wrong with the French? That is not sexy at all."

She drops the book on the floor. Not hard enough that is a gesture itself, but bluntly enough that Coulson knows that she really doesn't feel like reading about girls being seduced at fifteen.

"I think it's autobiographical," he tells her. "That happened to her. It's not meant to be – you know."

Skye picks the book and puts it on the little stool next to the sink. She regards it with more sympathy now.

"Well, they didn't have a copy of _Story of O_ in the shop," she says. "We could have had fun with that."

" _Story of O_ , uh?" He's impressed somehow.

"I know stuff," Skye says.

This time when he reaches his hand to her knee she doesn't push him away.

"Come into the tub," he says, soft but pleading.

Skye stands up and starts undressing, facing him. She doesn't make a show of it but she is going slow enough that Coulson knows it's for his benefit. The joy of Skye's body does not disminish with familiarity, he can say that.

"Make room," she says, as she steps in, but behind him.

"I thought it was going to be the other way around," he points out. "Normally it's the other way around."

"This is hotter," she says. "I want to have you between my legs."

Well, that's exactly what he wanted. He pouts and Skye gives him a friendly slap on the shoulder.

He shifts towards the tap and it's a bit awkward at first but then he settles, leaning back against Skye's breasts, with her legs wrapped around his waist. Coulson slips down a bit to rest his shoulder on Skye's shoulder.

"Nice, right?"

He agrees with a moan as she runs her fingers through his wet hair and then drops them to his chest, and she draws his scar because she likes doing that for some reason and Coulson is comfortable with that, for a similar reason. Her legs wrap around his sides, feet coming to rest on his thighs. Bless the huge bathtub, this is pretty spectacular, Coulson thinks, as Skye's hand drifts over his stomach, his hips, his half-hard cock.

She bites gently into his shoulder.

She gives his cock long, lazy strokes under the water.

It feels good and it feels frustrating.

"We should be sitting the other way around," he says, panting a bit against her already-familiar touch. "I want you to sit on my cock."

He's not a prude but he isn't normally this colorful when talking about sex. Skye makes him realize there's nothing particularly improper about it. He wants her to sit on his cock. His cock, like the rest of him, loves her. He might not be saying all the words but he is no longer afraid of the language. At least when it comes to sex it's precise. He might say I love you and that doesn't convey what it should, but if he says fuck and cock and cunt and please, Skye, let me go down on you for hours, they both know exactly what that means. There's a beauty, a purity to that. He's no longer afraid of words. She has taught him not to be. She has taught him not to be afraid of death. She has taught him not to be afraid of love.

"Later," she whispers, biting the shell of his ear.

 

 

Later she's slipped into a blue bathrobe and there's no tv here –one of the selling points of the B&B, Coulson guesses– but there's a little digital radio on the nightstand.

"I can take out my laptop if you want to –"

"The radio is okay," he tells her.

They open the bottle of wine and Coulson watches her from the bed. 

Skye leans against the desk, sipping on her glass – these are not wine glasses, Coulson wants to protest, but that would be too snobbish of him and he knows _exactly_ what Skye would say, how she would roll her eyes at him and laugh at him and kiss him. Okay, maybe he should make that comment. He is too entertained looking at Skye in that absurd bathrobe. Looking at Skye is a luxury he intends to enjoy until the very last moment. 

She finds an adequate station, one where they play jazzy stuff (she calls it "jazzy stuff", not him) and Coulson is no expert but he thinks he can recognize the standards. At some point he's pretty sure they end up listening to Billie Holiday's rendition of "I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me", which Coulson finds terribly ironic if somewhat fitting.

They drink – fast and joyfully – and look at each other like waiting for something, and listen to the music for a while.

Then Skye extends her arm towards him.

"Dance with me, Phil," she says.

"What?"

She shoves her hands into the pockets of the robe and flush crawls across her cheeks.

"I know this is your fantasy and all but... Can it be _my_ fantasy too for a while? We've never danced."

Coulson stands up. He's in his t-shirt and underwear, a bit drunk already, but he musters some dignity to offer his hand to Skye like a gentleman. She takes it, resting the other on his shoulder. They chuckle as they get into position, amused by the absurdity of the situation and the bottle of wine they have already finished.

Dancing with Skye, yes, this was a good idea.

Coulson is not sure why it hadn't occurred to him before. Dancing with a pretty girl before he dies. Someone who likes him. Someone who might love him. But he's had this thought before. He focuses. Skye 's hips pressed against his, letting him lead her to the sweet, too-sweet tune. They stay in silence for a while, enjoying themselves. Skye tries twirling, with mixed but adorable results. Hers robe is soft under his fingers and the ends of her hair are still damp from the bath. His hand curls around her hip as he sways her to the music and he feels a bite of happiness so sharp it's almost enough to root him to the spot. But he dances on. They dance on, finding a rhythm together as they have always done.

"Thank you," he tells her. At some point he should have to thank her, anyway.

Skye frowns.

"What for?"

"For being here."

She lifts her chin, regarding him with a smirk.

"Don't thank me. I'm drinking expensive wine and this is by far the nicest place I've ever spent the night in."

Coulson's grip on her waist tightens. 

"I know I'm old and pathetic for doing this, and I don't know why you are here when you could be with someone..."

"Someone what?"

"Younger? _Hotter_?" He smiles knowingly at his use of such a expression.

"Someone like Lance Hunter?" Skye asks, rolling her eyes.

"Or you want to tell me that _I'm_ your type?" he challenges her.

She wraps her arms around his neck, pulling him into the dance, her whole body pressed against his. She smiles warmly at Coulson.

"I want to tell you, Mr Director of SHIELD, and this is not just because we've already finished a whole bottle of amazing wine," she says, lifting her hand to thread her fingers into Coulson's hair, slowly, adoringly. "You happen to be the most gorgeous boy I've ever met."

She keeps caressing his hair as he smiles. He never thought he'd be called "boy" at fifty-one. Wasn't that the point of this all? But Coulson feels like it has escaped him, the point of it all. Recovering some semblance of a lost youth seems silly and unimportant. Bit by bit he had lost interest in that, in these games. The games were fine and fun but he kept going back to what was underneath. The quiet moments between him and Skye, the complicity. Her pity, her hopefulness. Her carefulness around him, and her freedom. Things that don't fit into the midlife crisis narrative. Coulson had wanted to be a cliche and in becoming one he had found this something else. He's dancing with Skye right now, like an idiot, ridiculous no doubt in his boxers and t-shirt and Skye in the oversized blue robe, both drunk, and he is dancing with her not because he's fulfilling some youthful fantasy or because he wants to dance with a pretty girl before he dies but because he loves her.

 

Later he makes loves to her, slowly. So slowly. He might be the one to go crazy.

Are they passionate? Coulson wonders suddenly. He thinks they are. This is a weird arrangement, for sure, but definitely not void of passion.

They have both sobered up already, after the wine and the dancing and Skye laughing when he crawled between her legs and tried to eat her out while drunk.

Now the music is muted and Coulson holds strands of her hair between his fingers, barely moving inside her, moving just through his breathing. She breathes with him. She's not embarassed to look him in the eyes with the same intensity as he is looking into her eyes.

"Skye..."

She brings her fingertips to his mouth, like she knows what he is about to say.

She kisses the words away from him, gently and thoroughly.

It doesn't matter.

Maybe she knows. Maybe she doesn't. _He_ knows. It would be unfair to say it, he thinks. Unfair to her. To himself. It's enough that he feels it. It's enough. This, all this, is enough.

 

 

They leave the place behind – too early in the morning and entirely too soon – and Skye looks at him from Lola's passenger seat.

"Coulson," she calls out.

"What?"

She shakes her head. She's not engimatic, she's just careful with what she lets other people see.

"Nothing," she says. "Later."

He wants to ask her if she had a good time. No, wait, that's not what he wants to ask. He wants to ask if she will remember these couple of days, long after he's gone. No, wait, that's not what he wants to ask. He wants to ask her if she loves him, if she could please tell him she loves her. No, wait, that's not what he wants to ask. He wants to ask her if she can save him. No, that's not it, either.

Coulson wants to ask if he has made her happy.


	10. vivre sa vie

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hunter part of this chapter was written before we knew who Bobbi was so, AUness all around.

"Leaving?" he asks, looking at her from the pillow. He's exhausted, orgasm-happy and already sinking into the matress with a contented sigh, but Skye is in a hurry.

"I have work to do," she says.

She's always coming and going these days. Since they came back from California last week she has been in a rush of activity. Coulson knows she's not sleeping, sees the dark under her eyes. He knows she's working on something and as her Director he should probably ask, but he's afraid.

"What kind of work?" he asks, wrapping his fingers around her arm. It's warm. It's warm here in their bed, Coulson wants her to stay. She tilts her head. No need to reply. "You know it's cruel to give a dying man false hope."

She disentangles herself from his touch gently. "Then I'd better make sure it's not false."

Since California her days and nights have been even more frenetic. Like something has changed. She is even more committed now. But the dark under her eyes is getting worse. Coulson doesn't want her to save him, he wants her to stay here with him, in their warm bed that smells of lovemaking and her and peace.

But she is already gathering her things, slipping back into her clothes. Ready for a fight against the world.

Coulson just feels bereft watching her leave.

Skye notices. She touches his hair.

"I can come back later, if you want," she says. "You'll be asleep but–"

"Wake me," he asks her. Every thing he says to her sounds like begging at this point. Skye doesn't seem to minds. She nods and walks out.

He doesn't know how long she is working because when she comes back he's pretty sure he's been asleep for a while.

Skye slips inside the bed noiselessly. They have been almost disgustingly domestic since California. Coulson wonders if he's even able to sleep without her anymore. He doesn't want to be this needy thing, Skye deserves better, but he wants to hog the hours and minutes and seconds and all the warmth.

"Your feet are cold," he tells her, kissing the curve of her arm.

"It's all complaining with you tonight," Skye says, sitting on the bed and rubbing her feet between the palms of her hands, warming them up. For him. If Coulson weren't half asleep he would find the gesture unbearably sweet. 

He's sweating a bit. Not too bad, not one of the worst times, but it's cold sweat. Skye notices as she lies besides him.

"Bad night?" she asks.

He doesn't feel that good. The kind of thing he can never hide from her, even though he still tries, he always tries. It's like being married.

He has no idea how late or early it is. "Something like that."

Skye holds him in an almost vicious grip. Her body seems larger than his for a moment. Her arms reaching for the whole extent of his beatland. His body fits into the space perfectly. His body hums in some kind of comfort. His body rushes before he does. His neediness is almost amusing at this point. Skye wipes the sweat off his brow with a worried expression.

"I wonder why it's different for me," he says against the crook of Skye's elbow.

"What do you mean?"

"The symptoms," Coulson explains. "They are not the same as with Garrett. I don't feel violent or... megalomaniac. _Psychotic_. It's different. I know it is."

Even remembering John while in Skye's arms makes him uneasy. Like it's not safe somehow. She's not safe somehow. Any moment now. Something could be terribly wrong. He knows the risks he's taking but does she? Lying besides a monster, holding a monster like this.

"Maybe because you are different," Skye says quietly. "You are not John Garrett."

"Mmm."

"I know you're scared of that."

He lifts his head a moment, smiles at her. "You know a lot of things."

"Of course. I'm your partner in crime."

He makes a pleased noise at that. 

It sounds good. Partner in crime. What does his partner in crime do when she is not with him? What does she think about? What does she feel? He could never be in her head, not completely. He can barely know what's inside his own head. His heart. What is inside Skye's heart? Even if he asked, if she tried to tell him what she's feeling that could never be accurate, it's not the feeling itself.

Can you ever truly know another human being? That's what he wants to know.

"It's way too late to get so existential," Skye says, and he had no idea he was talking out loud. How much has she heard? Does it even matter anymore?

"No, I think this is the perfect time to get existential," he says, sliding up Skye's body and kissing the line of her neck.

Skye presses her closed eyes against the pillow, lets out a warm noise and her breathing evens.

"Are you falling asleep?" he asks, suddenly gripped by a fear of being left alone in this bed, his own bed. He wants her to keep talking, for both of them to keep talking. He knows it's selfish and clingy. He promised himself he wouldn't do this to Skye. But he feels like he would be ship-wrecked in a crumbling room without her.

"Some of us do work, you know. Director," she says, eyes closed but smiling.

He knows what she's working on. He doesn't know where she goes when she is not with him. But he knows why.

"You don't have to," he reminds her.

He never asked for anything other than this they are doing right now, this moment, the safety and joy and confusion of Skye's body next to his.

"Of course I do. I have to save my boyfriend."

Casually.

For a moment Coulson thinks she's talking about someone else; she's never called him her boyfriend before, for all her insistence that he uses the word _girlfriend_. She opens her eyes and turns her face to him. Coulson dips his head to kiss her. The room is not crumbling anymore.

She wakes up and takes the initiative, pressing her palm against his cheek. She's all gentleness and sharp teeth, brusing Coulson's lips then running a healing tongue over the abused spot. She repeats it a couple of times, lazily playful, until his mouth feels sore and wonderful.

He pulls away but now Skye is completely awake. He wanted that. He feels a bit bad – he knows how precious sleep is these days.

She's staring at him, waiting for Coulson to say something.

"I'm thinking about my mother," he says.

Skye frowns, narrowing her eyes at him in a cute way. "I'm not sure I want you thinking about your mother when I'm kissing you but hey, to each his own."

"No," he laughs a bit. The implication – well, actually you could say Skye reminds him a bit of his mother, kind and tough and impulsive and capable of brightening a room just by walking in. "I was thinking she died younger than I am now. Not only I survived her but I _survived_ her."

Skye sucks in a quiet breath.

"What did...?"

"Cancer," he replies. "She knew she was going to die. We have that in common. I didn't, not really. I was in denial. Kept thinking I had more time with her. I wasn't by her side when she died. I remember the funeral. Director Fury was there."

She nods, dropping her gaze.

Will Skye come to his funeral? Will she be all sad and beautiful and elegantly dressed besides his grave like in that Truffaut movie? That's the one Coulson actually liked, among those watched in an honest effort in team-building. That one he remembers pretty well.

It will be a summer funeral, he guesses. Kind of depressing. He can't manage to do even that with some class. At least he still has some friends in high places, despite everything he won't have a terrorist's funeral. Who knows if Fury is reachable but he's sure Hill would do something about it. And May would make sure of that. He wonders who will come. Old friends. Coulson would have wanted to have seen his old friends once more. He guesses it's too late to pick up the phone now. 

Skye runs one finger across his forehead.

"You're not planning your funeral in your mind. Are you?" she asks.

Coulson feels the heat in his face, embarrassed.

"No?"

Skye laughs, sitting up. "I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you. That was too morbid. Please don't get morbid on me, Director."

He laughs too. It's ridiculous. Planning his own funeral. Fantasies of sad, beautiful women honoring him, mourning him. Completely absurd. He's here now, isn't he? Death and funerals are the furthest things from here, unthinkable really.

Skye's expression becomes sweeter, more indulgent.

"You want to pick the song to be played in your wake right now or...?"

"Rolling Stones," he says. He doesn't particularly like the Rolling Stones, he's not sure why he says it.

She arches one eyebrow and snorts. "Men are so predictable."

" _Beast of burden_."

"I have no idea which– Okay. Catholic service?"

"Well, I'm half-Catholic," Coulson replies. "But no. No religion."

That's an easy one.

Skye seems to approve of this made up plan for his funeral. Maybe they should be writing this down. He never thought he'd have someone he would discuss this stuff with. It feels weirdly comforting, in a twisted way. They are making plans for the future, together. It's fun.

"What about your gravestone?" Skye asks. "What should it say? Beloved Director of SHIELD _for a while_? Beloved friend and boss? Beloved scourge of HYDRA?"

Now who's being morbid. Coulson is a bit charmed by it, if he's honest.

He already has a gravestone, and he already has a grave. A fake grave for the fake death of a fake man. So many things have changed since then. Maybe he can die a real man this time.

"I don't know," he says. "Something simple, I think."

He doesn't want quotes or overly elaborated decorations. He hasn't touched the world enough.

Skye moves on top of him, straddling his stomach, grabbing his wrist in her hand.

"Maybe it should say... just _Beloved_. Just that."

He arches an eyebrow, wondering if that's some sort of confession, if he can even ask.

Skye kisses him into distraction.

Just "Beloved" sounds good to him.

 

 

"What was it like for you, being married?" he asks May.

"Why? Are you planning on marrying someone?"

Coulson wonders if it's a trick question.

He gives her a blank stare. It's not like he hasn't had fantasies about it – he has had fantasies about _everything_ at this point. He always thought he'd end up married somehow. Even when he had given up hope on it, a primal part of him still considered it a likely outcome. He was used to that idea. He wonders what Skye would think of his bourgeois dreams. He would marry her in a heartbeat if she wanted, of course, but that doesn't mean he still has the same old fantasies. This one is different.

"My mother said I'd understand a lot of things once I was married. I think she said it when she was chastizing me for something but I've always wondered if she was right," he tells May, remembering. "I guess now I'll never know what she was talking about."

May squeezes his shoulder gently.

"Marriage doesn't make you more enlightened, Phil. If anything it makes you dumber."

He nods.

It's not enlightment what he wants. Connection, maybe.

 

 

He's been enjoying himself, up to this point, and realizes he's going to miss these little chats with Hunter, chats of course lubricated by alcohol in various degrees. Some people are better when drunk. Lance Hunter definitely qualifies.

"Who introduced you to this appalling beverage?" Hunter asks, staring at the shot glass and the brown-ish color of Coulson's attempts to recreate the unforgettable combination of cheap vodka and hazelnut liquor.

"A woman introduced me to it," Coulson explains.

Hunter nods knowingly, downing his fifth shot.

"Of course," he says. "In every man's past lies a girl bent on deadly intoxication."

"Who said anything about her being in the past?" Coulson teases, smirking.

Hunter does a double take.

"Don't make me choke on this, sir. It's dangerous enough as it is."

Couslon smiles – for a moment he wants to tell somebody. Like it's something to be proud of. It is something to be proud of. Skye likes him. Skye loves him. Who wouldn't be proud? But it's not his secret alone, and it's a very petty and self-aggrandizing reason to tell. He's kind of stunned no one suspects anything, though; it's not like Skye has been particularly discreet coming and going from his quarters. He'd like to spill the secret to Hunter if only to check to what degree he'd be surprised. That's not a good reason either.

And Coulson wants to be serious for once. Hunter doesn't do serious. It would embarrass him.

So they fall into a somewhat awkward silence.

Coulson looks around. He is going to miss this place. He didn't like it so much, at first, the Playground. It hadn't been his choice, any of this, just something Fury dumped on him without asking. But it has become _home_ , without him noticing.

He likes it here, a building with history but it's theirs now. It's not impressive as a Hub or a Triskellion might have been, but it's warm. It fits them.

Of all the notions of mortality the idea of space seems the most bizarre and the closest one, too. The idea that people will continue to inhabit these walls once he's gone. They'll go up and down stairs, they'll play videogames, they'll use the lab, they'll make coffee in the coffee machine. They'll even sit in these same stool he's sitting on right now. Who knows, maybe they'll drink from the same bottle of vodka. Skye will still be here when he's dead. Coulson can imagine her perfectly, sitting on the leather couch, pouring over some report on her tablet, focused, competent and dedicated like always. She might look sad for a bit. He hopes she won't be sad for too long. He never wanted that for her, that's not why he started this. The things he wants for Skye are bright and beautiful and full of life. He can picture her in five, ten years, maybe thinking about him at the odd moments, that boss she used to sleep with in an attack of misguided pity, if she will think about him at all.

In five, ten years. God, Coulson thinks with fondness, she will probably be Director of SHIELD by then. And he is going to miss all that, he thinks with bitterness.

"How's your ex-wife?" Coulson asks Hunter, amused but honest. He personally likes Hunter's ex-wife, which Hunter would probably find unforgivable.

Hunter snorts.

"Still walking upon this Earth like a biblical pague. It's really hard to face the fact that the love of my life is an envoy of Lucifer." Then he pauses, more seriously now: "She sounded fine the last time I spoke to her. Happy. I hope she's happy."

Coulson raises his glass.

"To the loves of our lives," he says. "May they be happy. With or without us."

Hunter looks at him curiously, but agrees.

 

 

He gets anxious about last times again. Something inside him intimates the end. If not the end enough of a decay that he wouldn't want to be here anymore.

He becomes enamoured of his little countdowns again.

This is the last – 

But every time he wants to wonder out loud, every time he starts What if this is the last time I kiss you? Skye interrupts him, Skye just kisses him again. A very Skye solution but she will have to eventually let him go.

"No, I don't," she argues, lying on his bed. "I promised I would save you. And I will. It's coming, soon."

He nods against her neck, nuzzling her jaw, his nose brushing gently against her skin, overwhelmed like every night. He had anticipated the sex, the desire between them, but _god_ all this tenderness.

"I need you to make promise me this," grabbing her hand.

She doesn't like it. She squirms free and turns her back to him.

"I'm not giving up."

As if anyone could make her. Coulson wonders if Skye will consider it a flaw of character, when he eventually disappoints her. He hopes there will be no guilt, when she fails. He touches her back, rests his hand over the shape of her spine, preemptively comforting her for her loss. The t-shirt she normally sleeps in when it's not too cold feels so soft he has the strange surreal feeling it might come apart in his hands.

"I know I can't ask for anything," he tells her, "but I'd like you to do this for me."

He kisses the back of her neck and she stiffens. For a terrible moment he thinks she might be crying. But that's absurd. She hasn't cried once since this started.

"You have to promise. You'll let me die."

Skye turns again, facing him. No, she's not crying. 

Skye holds his head in her hands.

"I promise that I will do everything to save you, right up until the last moment," she tells him. "But I know what _last moment_ means, in this case. And I promise you I won't let you beg to be killed again."

He remembers that Skye remembers.

She kisses him, fervently, to seal a silent pact.

That promise is enough.

That promise will let him sleep tonight.

 

 

Was that night the last time he ever kissed her, the last time she ever kissed him, the last of last times?

When Skye disappears the next day Coulson realizes he still had things left to lose.


	11. Sans Soleil

It all started because Skye offered him a ride in her scooter.

No, it was before that.

Coulson tries to remember; for some reason he had decided he would seduce her.

 

 

"Come on, Skye. Where the hell are you?"

 

 

Something happened in those days, while he waited for Skye to decide, after that first kiss.

In all honesty Coulson always knew she was going to say yes.

_Oh you did, didn't you?_ Skye teased him about it on their second night together, because he blabbered about it like a fool, that second night of discovery. He had told her she couldn't say "no" to him, all smug against Skye's new, unfamiliar, surprising mouth. Coulson remembers it now, the delicate hesitation of those first hours together, learning the shape of Skye's knee, feeling a bit ridiculous and shy by her proximity, intimidated by her bold nakedness. They learned each other soon but Coulson hasn't forgotten the joys and fears of those first days.

_Will you regret it, saying yes?_ he had asked, still smug, still part of the seduction. Skye had simply shook her head without further explanation, just that serious little tilt she does sometimes, looking like she knows something you don't. Coulson had kissed her then and she had stretched like a cat on his bed and he had accepted that reply without further questions.

But he does regret it now, her saying _yes_. He had meant to recover something, not for Skye to lose anything.

 

 

"I'm sorry, sir," Trip is saying, an ugly frown, the first of the team to notice the sequence of events. "She asked for the keys to the SUV, said she was going to make a practice run to town. She's done that a hundred times, I didn't–"

"It's not your fault," Coulson tells him. It's his own fault. "You couldn't know she was going to disappear."

The choice of words surprises him, even though he's the one who made it.

Skye is hasn't left.

She's not gone.

She's _disappeared_.

The SUV is a dead end, it was always going to be, ditched soon at the edge of town, she's too smart to have done otehrwise. He puts the technical team on the task, checking surveillance cameras, relying on their face recognition software. But he fears it will do no good. If Skye doesn't want to be found she will never be found. She could disappear without a trace. That's one of her skills. A skill which details she keeps very close to her chest – after all she never told him how she had managed to erase her identity, once upon a time, or even why. And right now the resources of SHIELD are not what they used to be. She could go undetected as long as she wants. Why would she want to, it's the question that haunts him.

 

 

He tries to pinpoint the last words they exchange the night before. To see if he can find some sort of message there. What she said as they were falling asleep.

When he inspects her room in search of clues he finds the book she bought in California. Water-damaged but carefully kept in her drawer. Apparently she had time to finish it – it's a short book – judging by a couple of passages, underlined, well into the novel:

_It's while it's being lived that life is immortal, while it's still alive. Immortality's not a matter of more or less time, it's not really a question of immortality but of something else that remains unknown._

 

 

He would say he misses her, but you can't miss someone who's been gone just a few hours.

 

 

They have all gathered in his office, examining the bits of the video Billy has so laburously recovered. Coulson can't believe Skye was that careless, she must have left them behind on purpose, counted on the team taking a while to find out, giving her a head start without leaving them completely in the dark. Coulson still can't understand why but at least now he knows she expects them to follow.

"How could we have missed this?" he wonders out loud. "All this time she's been talking to Ward?"

Weeks, months. How oblivious he was. How reckless Skye.

"She was very efficient erasing the logs," Koenig points out, a touch defensive.

"And we had no idea."

"Where do you think she's gone?" Trip asks.

"I don't know."

Where did Skye go when she wasn't with him? Now he has his answer. Some sort of answer. She was the one living the double life. The careless, vital hours with him were merely covering up her real goal; from the beginning – and he is looking at the date of her first unauthorized visit to the basement in amazement – she was working towards it, trying to save him.

"Coulson," May says, like wanting an aside. But he doesn't want an aside. He has no more secrets to keep. He's drained. "Do you think all this, her leaving like that, has something to do with your condition?"

"Of course," he says, still looking at the scraps of camera feed salvaged from Skye's diligent insubordination. "She mentioned it once, she offered to ask Ward."

"When was this?" May asks.

He can't meet May's eyes. It's all his fault, of course. Everything Skye might be doing for his sake. He made her – yeah, he made her fall in love. He had set the stage in a way Skye had no choice, really. A con, it was all a con. He tricked her. And now some misguided sense of responsibility for her lover has pushed her to this extremes. To this. To this right here on the screen.

"When I first told her what was going on with me," he replies.

"And when was that?"

He knows May deserves an answer. But he doesn't offer one.

He keeps staring at the screen – the familiar shape of Skye. He tries not to look at Ward, he always tries not to look at Ward, even when he is down there and talking to him.

"She said she was going to save me," Coulson mutters.

Everybody in the room stares at him, but no one says a thing.

 

 

She has contaminated his daily life. Her disappearance leaves only an open wound. An absence that closes windows and turns off the lights. Nowhere is safe and Coulson feels like he could find the answer, the vital clue, if he could be rid of her ghostly traces for a moment. If he could focus without her invading his thoughts. She has tainted the Playground with the memory of her presence. Coulson's own innacurates memories of her. The way he would find her by the coffee machine in the morning, with her back turned to him, ignorant of his presence (his existence, Coulson used to think, or the sentimental streak in him did, that he didn't exist if Skye wasn't looking at him and that's a problem right now, isn't it) for a moment longer; or he would find her in the lab chatting with Mack and Fitz, or walking idly through the Bus turning a problem in her head and in her fingertips while in comforting surroundings, her thumb raised to her lip without noticing; or he would find her in his office, announced or unannounced these days, or he would find her and Skye would take his hand and she would teach him about the secret corners of the old base, the ones where knees and elbows and thighs and mouths fit but can't be seen or heard, she would teach him how to fool around, just as she had promised, there's not a single promise Skye hasn't kept so far and perhaps he should have asked her to promise she'd stay. 

Her disappearance is a bit too well-timed, right before the last reel of the film.

Too well-designed to make him lose it. And the compulsion beckons and he has no strength to fight both things at the same time. That first night without Skye he carves and carves until his hands hurt.

 

 

"Maybe you should get some rest," May tells him compassionately, after their session. She pretty much has figured out everything by this point, Coulson guesses, his unambiguous reaction upon Skye's disappearance, it's not that hard. The whole team must know. A lot of things must make sense to May now.

The Playground hums with frenzied, if hushed, activity in the middle of the night, which Coulson appreciates. But it's for Skye, so of course everybody would throw themselves into the work. She has no idea, has she. The saddest part is she has no idea.

He tries to sleep a couple of hours, still, making a concession to his non-existent sanity. He finds the thought of his own bed depressing, and going to Skye's room too pathetic, so he ends up shutting his eyes in a random vacant bunk. The nights don't make much sense without her, anyway. The habit and the expectations. The nights were an adventure. He remembers the night she discovered the few freckles on his back and counted them lovingly for an eternity. He remembered the night he discovered the mole on her upper thigh, where her leg met her hip. The night they compared childhood scars and childhood stories and Skye spoke, in a very low voice, of her worst memories while Coulson stroked her cheek. Coulson counts the nights in terms of these kinds of interactions, not in calendar dates. He feels lost without the night to look forward to.

 

 

There's the obvious clue.

He goes down to see Ward, who looks a bit smug about Coulson needing his help at this point of the game. Smug and horrible and Coulson wonders how exactly a man becomes that, becomes this in front of him, this smirking wolf. But he also looks worried about the idea of Skye at risk. He _cares_. An obsession needs an object and Skye is his. Coulson tries not to think about it. He still can barely look at Ward, now more than ever. Skye wouldn't want him coming down here, wouldn't want him to find her with Ward's help. It would taint everything. He has to think about what Skye would want first. All this time of being selfish, Coulson is done with that. And he's done with illusions and fantasies and adolescent daydreams and movies in black and white.

He doesn't sleep that night. The world seems too full of ugly things.

 

 

He knows the situation is dire when _even Hunter_ is being serious about it all.

"You don't look so great, mate," he says in the morning.

"I'm fine. Thank you."

Even though the symptoms are obvious.

The itching is back. The feeling that his own suit is slowly choking him to death throughout the day. At least this doesn't have to do with her.

But he can't get worse. He can't allow it. Because he can't die yet. Not without Skye here. And then it occurs to him, shockingly for the first time, that this might be the exact fate Skye is trying to avoid. That she's gone away so she won't have to watch him die. If that's the case then Coulson feels ambivalent about pursuing the investigation any further. If that's the case maybe she's right. It's too much to ask of another human being.

 

 

In the end he doesn't find her, of course. He doesn't save her.

(Skye would probably snort at his airs, it was always meant to be the other way around)

Skye can do those things on her own.

She still needs _some_ help, though.

Coulson would have breathed a lot easier these past couple of days if someone had noticed she had taken a tracker with her. Skye always has a plan; just not the one you expect.

 

 

"I needed to find it," she tells him, her breath a painful thread.

Coulson rests one tentative hand upon her shoulder, to feel the hum of her body, alive. He wants to touch her everywhere, make sure nothing is broken, wounded.

Part of this is his worst nightmare: Skye on a cold, operating table. But she's alive, and that comes first. She seems fine, suspiciously unhurt. In this room that smells of death, in this strange light. Everybody else gone. Raina gone of course (Raina's good at that).

"But the research is here," Skye says.

The research. The last clue.

He's still not sure how this helps his situation, but there'll be time for that later. He can't think beyond the fact that he has found her..

In this room that smells of death Skye tries to breathe. Maybe she shouldn't be talking. Coulson doesn't know. He doesn't know what he should be doing, what he could be doing for her. The rest of the team is searching the building. He wishes they hadn't left him and Skye alone. He touches her forehead and Skye curls her lips a bit.

"Good plan, uh?" she says while he is still looking her over to see if she is hurt.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Coulson asks, not looking at her eyes because he can't yet.

"Because you wouldn't have let me come here."

"Of course I would have stopped you," he says and for a moment he feels like Skye's boss above all, not her friend or her lover, just her superior. For a moment that's the biggest failure, that he couldn't protect his team.

"See?" she points out.

He wants to be mad at her, everything inside tells him he should be mad at her.

But he has missed her. Which is ridiculous because she has only been gone for three days.

He wants to be mad at her but in this room he has found her alive.

"That was really stupid of you," he tells her, trying to sound stern, managing pathetic instead, his fingers pressed gently against her collarbone. He can barely breathe, but maybe that's just the constriction of the flak vest. "Not telling anyone..."

She smiles. "Look who's talking."

"You're right. We're both stupid," he says sadly, unable to shake that feeling of having failed her.

She looks at him, fondly. "Are you okay? You're still okay, right?"

Like she's the one glad he's alive.

Coulson doesn't reply.

He looks at her and Skye presses her palm against his chest. It's time for the specifics of what they might have done to her. The place, sinister as a fairy tale. Artificial light, stale air. She's barefoot but she's not in some creepy hospital gown like in his nightmares, thank fuck. Coulson can't even think – 

"Did they hurt you?" he asks, finally.

Skye shakes her head a little too quickly, obviously for his benefit rather than the truth's.

"It wasn't like that. I came for help. I'll be fine," she says, closing her eyes again for a moment. "I got what I wanted. What I came for."

He's horrified. He hadn't known he had to say it out loud but maybe he should have made Skye promise she wouldn't subject herself to god knows what kind of experiments for his sake. He holds her hand and feels the bones underneath; Has Skye always felt so small? Have his own hands always felt so inadequate to hold her?

"Skye."

"I had to change," she says. "I had to _evolve_. It was no good as I was."

"I don't understand, Skye."

He keeps saying her name like he can't believe it's her.

She wraps one hand around Coulson's forearm, rather urgently.

"I needed to touch it. The Div– Obelisk. So it would work."

"What would work?"

She sits up on the table, with some difficulty but like she is waking up. Her eyes are more focused now, no longer glazed. She looks healthier. Coulson believes they might still make it after all.

"My blood. It was the only way. Pretty obvious, if you think about it. Silly. It's... _the blood_."

"You don't have to–"

"My father, I found my father," she blurts out, though they should probably wait until they've found complete safety and a doctor has seen to Skye before talking this through. It slips out of from her, like she needs him to know already, she needs to tell already, her fingers twisted into the collar of his shirt. "I met him. He told me how to– I asked for help. I'm sorry. He escaped because of me... But I couldn't..."

"It's okay, you don't have to talk now."

He slips his arm under hers and helps her walk. 

Walk out of here.


	12. Vivement dimanche!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disgustingly sappy ending to a disgustingly sappy story. Thank your for reading.

The blood, she had said.

_My blood._

What does that mean?

He remembers her blood on his hands, he remembers his hands trying to contain it and put her broken body back together, like someone would try to contain the ocean.

He doesn't know why he is remembering these things right now, when it's been so long since she got over that. The scars will never quite fade but she has owned them. He doesn't know why he is thinking about this _right now_. 

"It's the anaesthesia," someone says.

Why do they have to sedate him for this? 

It's more complicated than that, Skye told him. You might react badly at first.

Am I going to be all right?

I promise, she said.

He believed her, believes her, doesn't quite know when the conversation takes place.

Blood. It seems too simple. Like a fairy tale.

 

 

He's dying.

This time for real.

He's in the infirmary bed – he thinks he is still in the Playground. Simmons is there. What is she doing here? Oh, yes, she came in to help. To help him.

He's dying but to come back to life you have to die first. He knows this because he has done this before. The Second Resurrection of Phillip Coulson. Not a bad title, he thinks.

 

He dreams.

Or is just a fever?

He dreams Skye comes to see him. She looks paler than usual, more frail. More tired.

He dreams she says: " _Maybe you don't want to get better. Then you wouldn't have an excuse for this._ " And then she touches his face.

He dreams Skye smiles at him. Which makes no sense.

He dreams she smiles at him.

He dreams she tells him she loves him.

And just like that, he's not dying anymore.

 

 

He feels different.

He feels different when he wakes up.

He has this idea that he should feel _more_ different.

Different enough that he knows it has worked – and why would anyone ever doubt Skye when she says she'll fix something – but not different enough that he feels like another person. He had really wanted to feel like another person.

 

Hunter pops in, or rather he insinuates his head from behind the doorframe like a cartoon character.

"A beer?" he offers, pack in tow.

"I'm in a hospital bed," Coulson points out, though not exactly accurate.

"How is that a _No_?"

He chuckles – it hurts a bit – and gestures for Hunter to come in.

They've all been more or less to see him, even though Coulson has been way too drugged to deal with people (he vaguely remembers saying something quite drug-addled to May which May threatened to remember afterwards and he is a bit afraid of finding out – May is way too good at gathering blackmail material for leverage). Hunter is the first one he can speak too without feeling his mouth go pasty and his mind all foggy. 

The other man sits by his side, a bit uncomfortably it looks. Everybody has been acting weird around him – he was not too drugged to see that – and his condition. The fact that he lied to everybody. The fact that he is mortal and breakable, which bosses should never be. He remember thinking that about Fury. Maybe he does still.

They stay in silence and Coulson starts getting fidgety, considering the annoying sensation of the saline drip, the needle right under his skin. He's a very bad patient, he has always been.

"So you were dying," Hunter starts.

"Something like that."

"I don't appreciate when people keep secrets from me."

Coulson frowns at him. "Your particular feelings on the matter didn't enter my considerations."

"You don't need to apologize, sir," Hunter replies, patting Coulson's shoulder.

Coulson shakes his head.

Silence again.

Fidgeting again.

How long is Simmons keeping him here? He has work to do. Oh, right, he's not allowed to work. He's on forced vacation.

"So... Skye's an alien," Hunter starts again.

"Something like that, yes," he replies.

"That's kind of big."

Coulson shrugs, or tries to – his body feels heavy on the gurney. Not awful, he's not in pain, and he is free of the compulsion and that makes everything strangely lighter and easier, like the mere gesture of lifting his hand to rub his eyes doesn't have to be difficult and painful anymore. He remembers once he broke his arm in three places and had to be in cast for months and when the doctors cut him free he felt weak and liberated. It's exactly like this, only with his whole body, and his soul too, if Coulson believed in such things, which he might just yet.

As for the other thing... Skye being an alien had entered his calculations a lot time ago, before it was even plausible. It never bothered him, essentially, which is strange all things considered, the hole in the middle of his chest considered. 

"She really did save your life," Hunter points out, goading him. He thinks he's being subtle.

"How is she?" he asks. She hasn't come to visit yet. He hasn't asked anyone about that.

"Resting," Hunter replies, which explains it. "Kind of took a toll on our girl, this whole thing."

"And the Obelisk? She said she knew where it was."

Hunter shrugs. "That's all Skye's business. The rest of us don't even want to know. She'll decide what to do with the information."

"Well, it's kind of hers, by heritance, I guess."

He hasn't spoken to Skye since he went under. Didn't speak much before. 

"I don't get any of this," Hunter says. "You guys are on your own with that alien stuff, and stabilizing agents and multi-planetary biology translators or whatever it is Agent May told me. Or tried to tell me. She wasn't very patient about it either."

"It's complicated."

"Too much, if you ask me."

"There was dormant genetic material –"

"No, no," Hunter interrupts. "Don't try."

It's good to have someone like Hunter on the team, he guesses. He wasn't in the mood for explanations, anyway. The ones given to him by Skye weren't that clear either. I can save you, she had told him, and that had been enough. The rest didn't matter. They are binded by blood now, but then again in a way they always were.

"So you still have alien goo in your system?" Hunter asks, though.

"Yep."

"And now you have Skye's wonder blood settling everything up there. _Bad idea_ , I tell you, mate. Last time I let a woman get inside my head it was –"

"Not the ex-wife again."

 

 

He has to struggle with the fact that they won't let him work for a couple of days, even after he is officially "discharged". He hasn't had a vacation in years. What is he supposed to do with his time? With the compulsion gone time seems to slow down considerably. He doesn't have to count the days so desperatedly. The calendar looks vast and daunting right now.

He must admit he is scared of seeing Skye again. Not seeing her, he's seen her, he's sat with her while she was still resting in medical. Talking to her. All the choices he made regarding Skye he made them because he hadn't counted on surviving.

When he catches her sott-of-awake for the first time he finds her fidgety too, proding at the marks on her arm where Simmons took all that blood from. Coulson shudders.

"I didn't think you borrowing my youth was going to be so... literal."

Coulson smiles awkwardly. "Sorry."

"It's okay," she shakes head. "Hope I passed on some of the exuberance as well."

Coulson raises an eyebrow. She cocks her head to one side.

" _Come on_. You thought I didn't remember what you said?" she asks.

She is smiling at him, even through her exhaustion and weakness, but Coulson can only repeat: "I'm sorry."

He doesn't know what to do. He should touch her, kiss her, tell her he loves her now that everything is over. He really wants to. But he feels all his courage disappear when the compulsion to carve did. They have all the time in the world now and that paralyzes him. He's stuck like he used to be. He misses that freedom. He doesn't touch Skye, just keeps on sitting awkwardly by her side, pretending the last couple of months never happened.

He was such a bold, brave man when he was dying, risking everything in the name of sentiment.

 

 

 _Try not to be too mad at me when I die_ he had told her once.

 _Try not to be too mad at me when you don't_ she had replied.

 

 

"I'm dying," he says.

Skye rolls her eyes at him.

"Again with that?"

"No, I mean. _Not right now_."

"You're welcome, by the way."

Now it's his time to kind of roll his eyes. In a more dignified way, of course.

"Yes, as you _keep_ reminding," he says and Skye smiles at him, warmly, making this more difficult. "What I meant is, you realize I'm over fifty. Right?"

He knows that look of hers. She looks like she is about to chastize him.

"And you realize I'm an alien and a lab experiment and that youth, like _humanity_ , is relative when it comes to us. Right?"

He thinks about it.

They are in his room. Again.

They are in his bed – again.

They've just fucked again, which Coulson didn't think could happen if he ever got healthy again and it was a curious experience, being with her without the edge of death and its proximity. Time felt slowed down here too, between then, and it wasn't entirely a bad thing, just very new. He had watched Skye move over him, around him, second by second like that was enough, like he didn't need to feel like lifetimes were slipping away.

Of course then Skye had made a crude joke about _everything still functioning_.

"You are human," he tells her.

"Yeah..."

He feels like she doesn't want to talk about it yet. Skye prefers to do things on her own time and he is more than willing to leave that choice to her. He knows she feels lost and scared and doesn't want him to notice.

He's not sure why she is still here. Accompanying him in his house arrest, his indoor vacation under doctor's orders. But he is too afraid to ask. He's not brave and bold anymore. He lost that. He looks at her shyly. He has looked at her like this, half-naked and _his_ , a hundred times. He just wants to make plans again.

"Now maybe I can finally take you to Paris," he says, stroking the side of her face. Of all the things he wants to give her this might be the most attainable.

She leans back, sitting with her legs across Coulson's lap. Disgustingly domestic. Still something he wants. Still something he wants _with her_. 

"I have a confession to make," she says, bitting her lower lip a little. "I don't care about Paris. I never did. "

His hand on her knee. She's perfect. But he has had this thought before.

"What did you care about?" Coulson asks.

"So you are curious."

"You said you'd tell me."

"Remember that I told you I was kind of using you too?" she says. "I thought you had a good idea. Wanting to take back your youth."

She laughs, she says _youth_ in a self-deprecating way, the edge of her mouth curled. He wants to kiss her. Again. He still wants all the things he wanted when he was dying. All these sappy notions, they are not gone with the rest – the fear and desperation and hopelessness. And the recklessness.

"But you had an excuse and I didn't," she adds. "I wanted to have that, too, this romantic idea of being young. I was jealous, I wanted in on the fun."

"Skye. _You are_ young."

She draws her knees against her chest, hugging herself. Coulson wraps his hand around her ankle instead.

"But I've never really..." she starts. Then gestures towards Coulson and towards the bed and towards the both of them and towards the unquantifiable thing that is between. "Not like this."

She narrows her eyes at him and something changes, he feels it. She pulls away from him and then closer. She climbs on top of him, stradding his lap. Again. There are _again_ s now. Not last times. Maybe next times. She rests her hands on his shoulders, his chest, rewriting the familiar landscape. Coulson has the feeling he was right, his illness was a veil preventing him from seeing Skye. And now she is in front of him, looking at him and touching their foreheads together for a second, touching their mouths together for two seconds.

"I'm not wired to feel comfortable about wanting stuff," she tells him.

And you wanted me, Coulson thinks, realizing.

She doesn't meet his eyes for a moment.

"You could have said," he says, knowing that she couldn't have. "I would have–"

"But I wanted it to be like in a fantasy, like you wanted," she says. "I know you, Coulson, and I know myself. You would have been scared of hurting me and I wouldn't have felt like I could... fool around."

So she made that decision for him.

She was right. He would have been so casual about the whole thing if he had known it was something serious for her. Apparently it was something serious for him as well.

The fantasy is gone now. Then why does he still feel like this? Why is Skye still here?

Why is she still kissing him?

Her kisses are real enough.

"We took a weird path here," he says, and chuckles softly to himself.

"Well, it's already been established we're both stupid, so it's really not surprising, is it."

Then she moves, lying on the bed and pulling him with her.

She holds him down against the matress, grabbing his wrists in challenge. They are not playing a game anymore, there are no more games to play, and they are still like this. 

"I needed this too," she says. "I needed to know what it felt like."

And she is kissing him again – a whole universe of _again_ and Coulson is fine with it – and explaining herself with her kisses. With the sweet pressure of her weight on his body. Coulson welcomes desire again, so soon. He finds himself thinking about her, wanting her, all the time. It was foolish to think that was going to change just because his whole biology had been rewritten. 

He moves his hand across Skye's hips, grabbing her with the sort of passion he thought was an invention of novels and movies where it always rained. It makes her grin.

"Wait," she says.

She stands up, walks across his room. Wearing his shirt. She puts on some music. Something sentimental Coulson likes. She indulges him. She indulges him not because he is going to die and she pities him. She indulges him because she wants to. That was Skye's secret, all along. Coulson understands now.

She indulges him because she loves him.

The music starts. Skye smiles at him. She danced with him once. The fantasy is gone but he guesses there is still music to play.

Skye comes back to him, throwing herself into his arms, holding him against their bed.

"I've never done this either. I've never – gotten to be this free, and just... I don't know, explore what I feel. I've always felt very old, since I was twelve. You weren't the only one," she tells him, looking straight into his eyes. "A lot of my life felt like a waste. So many things have been decided for me already. And for you. I needed to feel young too. Maybe now we can be young together."

He smiles at the word.

"I'd like that."

She'll dance with him again.

"No more last times, okay?" she says and Coulson nods into the crook of her neck. 

"What about first times?" he asks, baiting her.

"Like what?"

He pretends to think about it. "Like... How about this is the first time I tell you I love you?"

Skye smirks.

"Okay. First times are allowed," she declares, kissing him lightly, seemingly impervious by the declaration.

She probably knew already, didn't she. Coulson feels very ridiculous. He thought he had been pretty smooth and sneaky about it all.

"What about you?" he asks, entwinning his fingers with her.

After all she has said tonight a part of him still fears her rejection.

Skye just waves the question off.

"Oh, I've already told you that," she says.

"You have?"

"You were sort of unconscious," she says. 

He thought he had imagined it.

She presses her mouth to his and it is warm and perfect and Coulson doesn't think he's dying anymore or that he's out of time. It doesn't feel like everything that led him here was such a waste, after all.

The fantasy is gone.

It was never a fantasy.

"This is the second time I tell you I love you," Skye says, in a soft, serious voice.

Second times are good, too.


End file.
